That’s not a very pretty prospect, but at least it’s better than not getting any sequel at all, which Cameron could have easily done after the success of the original “Avatar”. At the same time, it also means that whenever we do get the sequel, it will not have been rushed and will come out in a polished, good state.
Which is just as important, because as we said above there would be plenty of directors willing to release sequel after sequel once they saw the success of the original “Avatar”. Things got to the point where some directors were trying to imitate the original, but without much success. The authentic magic of Cameron’s work wasn’t very easy to replicate, as it turned out.
The current release plan for 2017 is just an estimate from what we can tell, so it’s entirely possible that Cameron could wrap up his work on refining the script earlier than he was anticipating, and end up releasing “Avatar 2” before December 2017. We wouldn’t hope for a pre-2017 release, on the other hand.