James Cameron is a master of great sequels. One need only look at his previous efforts ALIENS, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY and of course PIRANHA PART 2: THE SPAWNING. Add to that the fact he made a fairly successful film named AVATAR half a decade ago and you can practically hear the money registers oozing from excitement. Not only is Cameron making a sequel to the highest grossing film of all time, not only is he making two sequels, but in actual fact he is making one less than four sequels, four a grand total of three sequels. He isn’t working alone though, having hired four writers to co-head a sequel each (or two writers for the guys working as a team) along with Cameron himself. Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and Shane Salerno are the lucky quartet that have been chosen and at the Hero Complex Film Festival, Cameron spoke about how the group took a TV approach to writing the films:
We tried an experiment. We set ourselves a challenge of writing three films at the same time. I knew I could certainly write any one of them but to write three in some reasonable amount of time – we wanted to shoot them together so we couldn’t start one until all three scripts were done and approved. So I knew I was going to have to ‘parallel process’ which meant I would have to work with other writers. And the best experience I had working with other writers was in television when I did Dark Angel. The television room is a highly collaborative and fun experience. So we put together a team, three teams actually — one for each script. The teams consist of me and another writer on each one of those three films. Each [individual writer] would have their own script that they’re responsible for. But what we did that was unique beforehand was we sat in a writing room for five-months eight-hours-a-day and we worked out every beat of the story across all three films so it all connects as one three film saga. I didn’t tell [the three writers] which sequel was going to be theirs to write until the very last day. So everybody was equally invested story-wise in all three films. So the guy that got the third movie, which is the middle film of this new trilogy, he now knows what preceded and what follows out of what he’s writing at any given moment. We all consider that to be a really exciting, creative and groundbreaking experiment in screenwriting. It worked as a process to get our minds around this epic and all these new creatures and environments and characters.
This sounds like a very interesting approach and I’d be excited were it not for the fact that AVATAR was a very dull experience for myself. Hopefully the new writers can add some new blood and fresh ideas to a highly derivative first film. But since Cameron has made sequels that have had people arguing over which were better, the originals or the follow-ups, then I’m sure we’ll get at least a little something to be impressed by.
AVATAR 2: BLUES CLUES (title pending confirmation) is set for release in December 2016 with parts 3 and 4 following in the years following.
Source: Collider
