'Avatar' Sequels Coming...When? A Timeline of James Cameron's Updates Since 2010
James Cameron addresses the audience during the 20th Century Fox presentation at CinemaCon 2016 on April 14 in Las Vegas (Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
James Cameron surprised CinemaCon attendees yesterday, popping in to announce that he plans to make four sequels to Avatar instead of the mere three that had previously been confirmed. Reactions to this news spanned the gamut from “Honestly, who still cares about Avatar?” to “Doesn’t four more Avatar movies seem excessive?” to “At this point, why should I believe anything James Cameron says about Avatar?” Let’s focus on that last question.
Since Avatar was released on Dec. 18, 2009, and became the highest-grossing film of all time, discussion of the inevitable follow-ups – how many there will be, when they will be released, the progress Cameron has been making on them – has dragged on with seemingly no end in sight. A person could easily have learned how to speak Na’vi, then translated War and Peace into Na’vi, then recited the Na’vi version of War and Peace 10,000 times in all the hours that have been devoted to talking about Avatar sequels that still, seven years later, have not arrived in theaters.
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In order to put the history of Avatar 2.0 (and 3.0, and 4.0, and I guess, good God, 5.0) in perspective, here’s a timeline of plans that James Cameron has spoken about and deviated from in regard to what would be called a franchise if we actually had more than one Avatar movie. Which, by the way, we don’t.
January 2010: Ain’t It Cool News reports that, during a Variety-sponsored screening of Avatar, James Cameron confirms that he will make a second movie, and that Avatar has always been envisioned as a trilogy.
October 2010: Deadline breaks the news that Cameron will make Avatars 2 and 3 as his next films. The second film is targeted for a December 2014 release, with the third one to follow in December 2015.
January 2011: Cameron confirms to Entertainment Weekly that he’s working on the screenplays for both films, and still plans to release them around Christmas 2014 and Christmas 2015, respectively. EW also notes: “It’s probably best to take those release dates with a grain of salt, since the first Avatar had several release dates before its December 2009 release.” This can retrospectively be referred to as foreshadowing.
July 2012: What do you know? The Avatar sequel is delayed until 2015.
Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) in ‘Avatar’ (Photo: 20th Century Fox/AP)
August 2013: Cameron triples down and announces, along with Fox, that there will now be three sequels to Avatar, not two. He also hires several screenwriters to collaborate with him on the screenplays.
April 2014: In a Reddit AMA, the filmmaker confirms that the three sequels will go into production simultaneously and that the screenplays are almost done. “We should be finished with all three scripts within the next, I would say, six weeks,” he says. It’s all finally happening, you guys!
January 2015: Oh wait, it’s not happening. Cameron says Avatar 2 is now pushed back to 2017.
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December 2015: Cameron tells the Montreal Gazette that the second Avatar is slated to hit theaters in December 2017, with the following two to come in 2018 and 2019.
January 2016: You know what? Scratch that. The Wrap reports that Avatar 2 is delayed indefinitely, though Cameron himself doesn’t weigh in on that. Given how the Avatar sequels have unfolded so far, “indefinitely” sounds about right.
April 2016: That brings us to the present, where Cameron has announced that there will be four sequels to Avatar that roll out, starting with Avatar 2, around Christmas 2018, with the following three movies coming in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
For those who need help with the math: that means the last Avatar will arrive in theaters 13 years after the first one did, assuming it shows up on time, which… come on. Then again, maybe Cameron has finally ironed out what he wants to do and has the stories and team in place to execute the film(s) on schedule. Sure, let’s believe that. Also, can you pass the grains of salt?
‘Avatar’: Watch the trailer: