'Avatar' Sequels Planned For December 2014, '15

Director James Cameron outlines his plan to shoot the sequels together.
By Aly Semigran

Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington in "Avatar"
Photo: 20th Century Fox

On James Cameron's watch, come 2014 and 2015, it will, in fact, be a blue, blue Christmas. The writer/producer/director, who was at the helm of 2009's Oscar-winning, box-office-record-breaking "Avatar," told Entertainment Weekly that fans of the big-screen digital breakthrough should expect its subsequent sequels within the next three to four years.

"I am in the process of writing the next two 'Avatar' films now," Cameron said. "We are planning to shoot them together and post them together, and we will probably release them not quite back to back, but about a year apart."

Cameron said that the "current plan" is for the follow-ups to hit theaters by "Christmas '14 and '15." While the first "Avatar" took more than four years from inception to screen, Cameron told MTV News back in December 2009, "My next goal is to refine the technique, make it easier so it doesn't take as long."

"From the time we capture and finish the capture, it's literally nine to 10 months to get the CG characters working, to get their facial musculature working. ... So now we have Jake, we have Neytiri. Sam can step right back into it, the characters will fit them like a glove, and we'll just go on. So a lot of the start-up torque that had to be done for one movie really makes more sense if you play it out across several films," Cameron explained.

While the 56-year-old did not divulge on too many plot details for the "Avatar" sequels, he did confirm to EW that characters such as Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), should be expected to make a return. "Basically, if you survived the first film, you get to be in the second film, at least in some form," Cameron said.

After hinting that the sequels would take place in Pandora's ocean, Cameron spoke to MTV News last year about how he would make the new environment come to life. "I think what we should do there is — because we'll have to have characters that are in and under the water — is that we should actually capture them underwater," the "Titanic" director said.

And while Cameron's storyline may change from the first to the second and third films, it seems his purpose behind the project has stayed steadfast. "Fox has partnered with me to donate a chunk of the profits to environmental causes that are at the heart of the 'Avatar' world," he told EW. "I didn't want to make more 'Avatar' movies without a grander plan in place."

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