James Cameron returns to Avatar after more than a decade for his next highly-anticipated sequel. Avatar: The Way of Water is a direct follow-up to the original 2009 blockbuster, but the upcoming movie is just the beginning.
The Way of Water was written by Cameron, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver, who are also known for their work on Jurassic World, the latest Planet of the Apes trilogy, and the upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
We still don't know what Cameron has planned for Avatar 3, but he's now discussing the fourth film, which sounds like it could be a pretty mind-blowing experience.
“I can’t tell you the details, but all I can say is that when I turned in the script for 2, the studio gave me three pages of notes. And when I turned in the script for 3, they gave me a page of notes, so I was getting better. When I turned in the script for 4, the studio executive, and creative executive over the films wrote me an email that said, ‘Holy f!#k.’ And I said, ‘Well, where are the notes?’ And she said, ‘Those are the notes.’ Because it kind of goes nuts in a good way, right?”
Cameron wrote all the scripts for his future films before starting production on The Way of Water, and revealed that he took influence from Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
“My model was what Peter Jackson did with The Lord of the Rings, which was a crazy bet in its time. And really hats off to that, that they took that chance to launch on all three of those films. But he had the books mapped out, so he could always show the actors what they needed to know about their character arc. So I felt I had to do the same thing. I had to play this as if the books already existed. So the only way for us to do that was to write all the scripts and let the actors read all the scripts and see where their characters were going and what it all meant. Not that that’s actable at the moment, but I think it’s something that the actors could work into their preparation for their characters.”
Avatar: The Way of Water will open on December 16th.