Taking part in an AMA on Reddit, filmmaker James Cameron took a few minutes to discuss the scripts for the upcoming sequels to Avatar, which are currently in pre-production in New Zealand.
“The second, third and fourth films all go into production simultaneously,” he wrote. “They’re essentially all in preproduction now, because we are designing creatures, settings, and characters that span all three films. And we should be finished with all three scripts within the next, I would say, six weeks….The biggest pressure I feel right now is cutting out things – I love to get the film down to a length that is affordable. There hasn’t been a problem finding new and wonderful things to include in the movie.”
Cameron also shot down the rumor from September of last year that Arnold Schwarzenegger would appear as a villain in the film.
“As of right now, he and I have not discussed it, and I don’t see a role as the scripts are coming together that would be appropriate for him, so I would say probably not.”
The individual scripts for the “Avatar” sequels are being penned by a number of different writers along with Cameron including Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds), Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (Rise of the Planets of the Apes) and Shane Salerno (Savages, Salinger). The release of the first follow-up will be released in December 2016, with the second to follow in December 2017, and the third a year later. Actors Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, and Stephen Lang are all set to reprise their roles from the first film.
