Every­thing we know about Avatar 2

Avatar, James Cameron’s sci-fi block­buster about an injured sol­dier com­ing into con­tact with a tribe of blue-skinned aliens called the Na’vi, was an instant hit upon its release in 2009, col­lect­ing a cool $2.7 bil­lion at the glob­al box office – a record it still holds.

Though crit­i­cised for its 161-minute run­time, the film’s exquis­ite spe­cial effects wiz­ardry and insane atten­tion to detail earned it a strong fan­base. Indeed, so absorb­ing was the world of Avatar, reports emerged of movie­go­ers feel­ing sui­ci­dal over the fact that Pan­do­ra isn’t a real planet. 

Eight years on, Avatar remains a bold and intri­cate artis­tic state­ment – and in an indus­try that loves a safe bet, it’s con­tin­ued cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance and proven box office clout means that a sequel is hot­ly anticipated. 

In 2010, it looked as though a Na’vi reunion was all set to move ahead. Cameron con­firmed that stars Sigour­ney Weaver, Sam Wor­thing­ton and Zoe Sal­dana had signed on for what was then a pair of sequels, slat­ed for release in 2014 and 2015.

Yet delays caused in part by script revi­sions and the trag­ic death of com­pos­er James Horner in 2015 have left audi­ences wait­ing for shoot­ing to commence.

But now there final­ly appears to be some seri­ous move­ment. On 3 April, 2017, Sigour­ney Weaver told the Hol­ly­wood Reporter that pro­duc­tion on the first of what is now four sequels is expect­ed to get under­way lat­er this year.

How­ev­er, her com­ments fol­low Saldana’s state­ment in Decem­ber 2016 that shoot­ing was sched­uled for spring, and Cameron’s announce­ment in March that it would begin in August. The exact pro­duc­tion sched­ule remains some­thing of a mys­tery – so what do we know for sure about this ambi­tious sequel?

Cameron is already rais­ing expec­ta­tions in typ­i­cal­ly ver­bose fash­ion. ​“I can tell you one thing about [the films]. They’re gonna be bitchin’” he told Empire back in 2014. ​“You will shit your­self with your mouth wide open.”

Despite things mov­ing for­ward so slow­ly, the orig­i­nal stars seem as com­mit­ted as ever to the project. Cameron told Vari­ety in 2016 that the sequels will fol­low Jake (Sam Wor­thing­ton), Neytiri (Zoe Sal­dana) and their chil­dren. ​“It’s more of a fam­i­ly saga about the strug­gle with the humans,” he said.

This chimes with his 2014 remarks to French TV chan­nel RTL​.fr that, ​“The pri­ma­ry con­flict between the human view of dom­i­nat­ing nature and the Na’vi view of inte­grat­ing into nature stays the same, but it man­i­fests itself in dif­fer­ent ways.” 

Sam Wor­thing­ton offered fur­ther details of his character’s jour­ney in an inter­view with We Got This Cov­ered: ​“This is going to be Jake eight years lat­er, and he’s got a fam­i­ly now. Jake will still have that essence of a kid see­ing the world for the first time, but he’s been liv­ing in the world for a while now.”

Mean­while Weaver, whose char­ac­ter Dr Grace Augus­tine dies in the first film, has con­firmed that she will return in a dif­fer­ent role. And despite the death of Colonel Miles Quar­itch, Weaver’s co-star Stephen Lang will also be back.

Avatar’s suc­cess was large­ly down to its tech­ni­cal wow fac­tor, and it looks like Cameron is poised go even big­ger with his sec­ond instal­ment. The vision­ary direc­tor plans to intro­duce new worlds, cul­tures and species into the already com­plex Avatar universe.

In order to make the view­ing expe­ri­ence as immer­sive as pos­si­ble he’ll shoot in a high frame rate, and will even utilise under­wa­ter per­for­mance cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy for the film’s sub­ter­ranean scenes . In 2016, Cameron also teased that he was explor­ing the idea of mak­ing the film in 3D – with­out the need for glass­es.

Cameron is no stranger to long incu­ba­tion peri­ods, with Avatar itself tak­ing 15 years to devel­op from the orig­i­nal treat­ment. The sev­en-year gap between Ter­mi­na­tor and Ter­mi­na­tor 2 didn’t stop that fran­chise from mak­ing a huge com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al impact. Hope­ful­ly Cameron’s per­fec­tion­ist ten­den­cies will bear sim­i­lar­ly spec­tac­u­lar fruit this time around, although even at this ear­ly stage every­thing is point­ing towards Avatar 2 – not to men­tion Avatars 3,4 and 5 – being too big to fail.