The science fiction movie “Avatar 2” is officially set to be released to worldwide theaters during the Christmas holidays of 2017.
The most successful film in history “Avatar” shown in 2009 will finally be getting a sequel in about two years time, while “Avatar 3” and “Avatar 4” will continue the string of sequels in 2018 and 2019, respectively, according to Day Herald. The sequels will be produced by Cameron’s Lightroom Entertainment and 20th Century Fox
Jim Gianopulos, CEO of Fox, has explained the eight-year gap between “Avatar” and “Avatar 2.” According to Gianopulos, James Cameron, the director of the movie, has his own pace but the story is now coming to its final form, reports Variety.
The sequel will have its novelties including the characters of Dr. Grace Augustine and Colonel Miles Quaritch. “Avatar 2” will bring these characters back to life, and Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang, respectively, will reprise their roles in the sequel. Lead characters of the sequel will still be Jake Sully and Neytiri, which will be played by Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana, respectively.
There have been reports regarding the filming process as well. Cameron has confirmed that the movie will be using new technologies to enhance the shooting process, one of which is the underwater motion-capture technology. The delay in the filming of the movie has been attributed to this fact, given that the development of new shooting tools is still in progress. However, Weta Digital, the company behind the technology development for the movie, will design these new tools to aid the movie’s shooting with enhanced software and computer graphics tool, and speed up the filming process.
As cited by Ecumenical News, Cameron also explained the movie’s delay due to the writing of the three sequels simultaneously. The movie’s creators, according to Cameron, do not want to make the sequels one after another. Instead, they are making the design of the whole bunch in one sitting, as far as the creatures and environments are concerned.
“Avatar” was nominated for nine Academy Awards and has won awards for Best Art Direction, Best Visual Effects, and Best Cinematography.
The movie is set in the 22nd century, on a planet called Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system. A tribe called Na’vi is endangered by the colonization of their planet. As the character of a disabled soldier named Jake, he enters the tribe’s world and slowly becomes one of their members.
The development of Avatar started in 1994 and the filming was supposed to have started in 1999, but Cameron’s vision about the movie could not have been completed with the 90s technology.
The movie has become the highest-grossing film of all time, overtaking “Titanic,” which was also directed by Cameron, and putting it in the second place in the list. The official budget of the movie reached $237 million, with an additional cost of $150 million invested in promotions. “Avatar” became the fastest film to gross over $2 billion, and it also became the best-selling film in the United States in 2010.
The movie used extensive filming technologies such as RealD 3D, XpanD 3D, IMAX 3D formats and Dolby 3D in order to have a detailed 3D movie.
Filming of “Avatar” began in Los Angeles and Wellington, New Zealand, with photography shoots in April 2007. Motion capture photography was set at the Hughes Aircraft Stage in Playa Vista in Los Angeles, and it lasted for 31 days. The use of virtual camera system introduced a new way of directing motion-capture filmmaking.