Actor Stephen Lang recently joined the panel of the horror film “Don’t Breathe” at the Wizard World ComicCon in Chicago and he was both asked of his role in the upcoming movie hitting theaters on August 26 and in the sequel to the most successful film of all time, “Avatar.”
Lang played the role of the villainous Col. Miles Quaritch in “Avatar” who was killed after taking several huge Na’vi arrows through his chest.
It was critically-acclaimed director, writer, and producer James Cameron who previously confirmed that Stephen Lang will be back in “Avatar 2” to reprise his role as Col. Miles Quaritch.
When asked back then if how Cameron is going to do it since Quaritch is very much dead during the first movie, the director said that nobody dies in fiction.
He did not say exactly how it is going to happen but reports have it, which was also affirmed by Stephen Lang, that Col. Miles Quaritch is expected to be resurrected in unexpected places not only in “Avatar 2” but also in the three subsequent sequels up to “Avatar 5.”
In a recent interview, Cameron was quoted as saying that Col. Miles Quaritch will evolve into really unexpected places across the arc of the four-film saga, notes Blastr.
Filming to start early next year
Stephen Lang also confirmed that filming for “Avatar 2” and the three other sequels will begin early next year.
He was quoted as saying during the presentation panel at the Wizard World ComicCon that they will indeed start shooting for the “Avatar” sequels at the turn of the New Year, reports Inverse.
The actor also added that he thinks that the whole process of making the films and openings will go to about 2023, which was consistent with what James Cameron said that “Avatar 2” will come out in 2018, “Avatar 3” in 2020, “Avatar 4” in 2022, and “Avatar 5” in 2023.
He also knows the status of “Avatar” as the all-time highest grossing movie worldwide with its more than $2.7 billion box-office take when it was released in 2009. So the pressure is really on Cameron and the production team to really make good on the sequel in order to be at par if not surpass the box-office results of the original film.
Critics, however, believe that it would already be very difficult for any “Avatar” sequels to beat the original film in terms of box-office performance and only Cameron seems confident that he can surpass the record that his own film set. Incidentally, the second movie in the list of all-time top-grossing movie, “Titanic,” was also helmed by James Cameron.
Taken back in for good acting
Cameron confirmed a few months ago that Stephen Lang will reprise his Col. Quaritch character in “Avatar 2” because his rendition of the character in the first film was the foremost reason why Cameron wants him back.
In a recent interview with Stephen Lang for the promotion of his upcoming movie “Don’t Breathe,” he said that at no point during the making of the first movie did he think that a sequel to “Avatar” was inevitable.
But when “Avatar” became a record-breaking success around the world and it became a global phenomenon, Cameron told Lang that he will be coming back. Lang asked how and Cameron said that he told him about it already.
The actor said Cameron may have mentioned it once to him but he can no longer recall it. However, that is no longer important to him because what is important is that he will be returning to “Avatar 2,” something which he described as not being real at all.
Many fans of “Avatar” believe that an “Avatar 2” is imperative because the story of Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldana and Jake, played by Sam Worthington, is not yet finished.