Given how long it took James Cameron to make Avatar, we can be patient for the next one. And that's good, because we now have to wait a little while longer. The AP reports [via Deadline] that the follow-up to the 2009 box office record breaker is no longer able to meet its planned December 2016 release date. We've heard it before -- at one point, Avatar 2 was set for Christmas 2014 -- so this isn't surprising. The new aim is for Christmas 2017, and hopefully that one sticks because it means the other two parts in a trilogy being shot simultaneously are also pushed back. Avatar 3 is due in December 2018 and Avatar 4 will hit in 2019, exactly a decade after the original.

At a press event in New Zealand Wednesday, the director explained the delay was due to the painstaking process of writing three scripts at once. "There’s a layer of complexity in getting the story to work as a saga across three films that you don’t get when you’re making a stand-alone film." 

With so much time passed since that first, groundbreaking 3D sci-fi epic, some have questioned its lasting fandom and the anticipation of its sequels. But that's a dismissal of both Cameron's technical skills as an entertainer and Avatar's success as a historical and spectacular piece of cinema. Even if we haven't watched or thought about it in the five years since it opened, that doesn't take away from the experience we all had seeing it back in 2009. And whether or not you're anticipating the next three movies today, when they come along they're going to be must-see events.

Of course, by the time the Avatar sequels do come out, maybe it'll also be a huge deal for moviegoers entering adulthood who saw the original as kids.