Even though Avatar 5 isn’t out until 2031, James Cameron is thinking about Avatar 6 and Avatar 7 as well. It may never end.
Wherever you stand on the Avatar movies, it does feel as though cinema has lost a fair number of interesting James Cameron films down to Cameron’s two decade commitment to the franchise.
It’s not that the films aren’t popular, and it’s not that the film aren’t loved. Two movies into the series, and there’s more than four billion in box office takings in the bank already. Furthermore, James Cameron is deep into making Avatar 3, Avatar 4 and Avatar 5, the latter of which is now scheduled for release in – gulp – 2031.
Yet the Cameron brain is not stopping there. He’s been chatting to People in a new interview, and admitted that even when this current run of movies is done, he has ideas percolating for even more.
Talking to the outlet at the Saturn awards in Los Angeles – where Cameron picked up a bunch of gongs – he admitted that “we’re fully written through movie five”, and the added “I’ve got ideas for six and seven, although I’ll probably be handing the baton on at that point”.
He does admit that “mortality catches up. But I mean, we’re enjoying what we’re doing. We’re loving it. We get to work with great people.”
He certainly seems to have found a happy place, and he’s one of a tiny number of filmmakers in the world entrusted with gigantic budgets of Avatar level (Avatar: The Way Of Water famously needed to gross, according to Cameron, over $2bn at the global box office to break even. It did.)
Furthermore, he’s candid about the fact he’s looking to build something along the lines of world building franchises such as Star Trek and Star Wars. It’s just those tended to come along a little bit quicker on the whole.
Avatar 3 will be in cinemas at the end of 2025. Then it’s a four year wait to Avatar 4. I cannot guarantee I will still be alive to write about it, the rate these films are going.
