With Avatar winning the holiday box office by raking in a staggering $75 million here in the states, bringing its worldwide total to – are you sitting down? -- $615 million in only two weeks of release, it’s pretty obvious that 20th Century Fox will find a way to make at least one sequel. James Cameron has previously stated that his original plan all along was for three Avatar films, and that he sold Fox on the pitch by convincing them to put up all that money (the most ever, topping out somewhere near $500 million) to help create this new technology so that when it came time to do the sequels, most of the legwork would already have been put in.
So, yeah, Cameron wants to make an Avatar sequel, and with the film pulling in these sorts of numbers, the studio will most likely green-light the next installment within the next couple months (or sooner). But where would Cameron take the story from here? In an interview with the Hero Complex blog, Cameron said he’d be down for exploring the moons surrounding the planet Polyphemus, which the planet Pandora orbits. This means Cameron is interested in expanding the universe to include additional space travel and the potential for batches of new aliens.
No scripts have been written yet, but after heavy criticism over Avatar’s central clichéd storyline, I wouldn’t be surprised if they hired a more accomplished screenwriter to help Cameron mold his dream trilogy. That said, will Cameron choose to direct all three? Will he move onto something else and let another director take over? And if this film took 10 years to make, just how long would we be waiting for a sequel?
What do you think? What would you want to see from an Avatar sequel? One that remains on Pandora, or one that explores other moons and planets? And how long would be too long to wait for the second installment?
