Avatar was a huge undertaking for James Cameron, but it was one that combined all of his sensibilities into one glorious, extremely lucrative package. It gave him the opportunity to make a statement on man's destructive attitude towards nature, while also exploring and developing new technologies that have changed the way we look at movies. We've known for awhile that he was completely engrossing himself in prepping the two upcoming sequels to the film, but now for the first time we're starting to hear him talk about the possibility of Avatar 4. Things must be proceeding quite nicely. He tells the New York Times(via Bleeding Cool)...
Cameron: "I've divided my time over the last 16 years over deep ocean exploration and filmmaking. I've made two movies in 16 years, and I've done eight expeditions. Last year I basically completely disbanded my production company's development arm. So I'm not interested in developing anything. I'm in the “Avatar” business. Period. That's it. I'm making "Avatar 2," "Avatar 3," maybe "Avatar 4," and I'm not going to produce other people's movies for them. I'm not interested in taking scripts. And that all sounds I suppose a little bit restricted, but the point is I think within the "Avatar" landscape I can say everything I need to say that I think needs to be said, in terms of the state of the world and what I think we need to be doing about it. And doing it in an entertaining way. And anything I can't say in that area, I want to say through documentaries, which I'm continuing. I've done five documentaries in the last 10 years, and I'll hopefully do a lot more. In fact, I'm doing one right now, which is on this, the Deep Sea Challenge project that we just completed the first expedition. So that'll be a film that'll get made this year and come out first quarter of next year."
Ok, so there's some good news and bad news in that rather lengthy statement. First of all, I thought Avatar was such an ambitious, perfectly tuned project for him that knowing he'll have all barrels aimed at that franchise makes me very happy. The plan was for Avatar 2 to hit somewhere in 2014, but it looks like it may have been bumped a little bit.
Now the bad news: This sounds like the end of Cameron's plan to direct Battle Angel, an adaptation of Yukito Kisihiro's cyberpunk manga, Battle Angel Alita. While the hope has long been to complete it after the Avatar sequels, Cameron recently referred to it as "low priority". And now we see why, because it doesn't sound as if he'll do it at all.
Can't really blame him, can we? Avatar is the highest grossing film of all-time, having grossed nearly $2.8B. The sequels have the potential to do even better, and if they allow Cameron to flex his creative muscles in a way no other film can, why not stick to what makes him happy?
