James Cameron has been discussing the desire to ‘pass the baton’ following the current stretch of production on the upcoming sequels to Avatar.
James Cameron has been chatting about the Avatar series a lot lately, comparing it to Lord Of The Rings when chatting to Empire about the difficulty of world-building in the follow-ups and choosing to compare the upcoming sequels to Tolkien’s classic novels, long considered unfilmable, to make his point. “Imagine a series of novels like The Lord Of The Rings existed,” relays Cameron when recalling his discussions with executives from what was then 20th Century Fox, “and we’re adapting them.”
“Now, that was great in theory, but then I had to go create the frickin’ novels from which to adapt it,’ the director explained.
The director has also been mooting the possibility of taking a back seat in the franchise when he’s done with this year’s sequel, The Way Of Water, and the follow-up which was also filmed consecutively. “I’ve got some other things I’m developing as well that are exciting,” adds Cameron, “I think eventually over time – I don’t know if that’s after three or after four – I’ll want to pass the baton to a director that I trust to take over, so I can go do some other stuff that I’m also interested in. Or maybe not. I don’t know.”
Considering the decade Cameron has just poured into the upcoming two films, we wouldn’t be surprised if he chooses to move exclusively to a producer role after they release, especially if he has other films that he wants to make. Way Of Water is coming to cinemas in December, with the next instalment set for sometime in 2024. The plan is then to shoot the next two films back-to-back ‘somewhere down the line’ but we’ll wait and see just how involved Cameron wants to be at that point.
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