Avatar: The Way of Water proved to be a record-breaking hit for Disney when it opened last December and filmmaker James Cameron remains hard at work on the next three instalments of the hit sci-fi franchise.
In an interview with People (via SFFGazette.com), Cameron offered an update on how work is progressing on the third chapter. "We did the capture on three and the live-action photography on three as an intermingled production with [Avatar: The Way of Water]," he confirms, "and we even did part of movie four because our young characters are all going to have a big time jump in movie four."
Unsurprisingly, a great deal of work on the movies has overlapped and Cameron would go on to share more about what fans can expect from 2029's Avatar 4.
"We see them and then we go away for six years and we come back," he said of the aforementioned time-jump. "And so the part where we come back is the part we haven't shot yet. So we'll start on that after three is released."
Let's not jump the gun too much, though, and back to that third movie, Cameron went on to reveal Kate Winslet will return to reprise her role as Ronal and says she "went to school" to learn from "a husband and wife shaman practice." Why? "When you see her [Winslet] doing that purification ritual to try to revive Kitty in the film and some of the stuff that she's going to do in movie three, that's based on actual practice," the director reveals.
Love or hate the Avatar movies, from a technical standpoint alone, Cameron's work on the sci-fi franchise has been extraordinary. It's previously been revealed that the action will move to Earth in that fourth movie, with Neytiri likely to be captured and taken to Jake's old home.
As we know from Cameron's past work, he's not one for bittersweet endings, so their story may not end on the happy note that the first Avatar movie suggested.
Earlier this year, Avatar 3 was pushed back to December 19, 2025, with Avatar 4 later moved to December 21, 2029. That leaves Avatar 5 pencilled in for a December 19, 2031 release.
When that fifth instalment comes out, it will have been over two decades since Avatar was released in 2009. As far as we're aware, it's also where Cameron intends to end this story, though it's certainly possible he'll choose to make Avatar 6 at some point in the coming years.
Stay tuned for updates as we have them.