This comes at absolutely no surprise, so apologies for my sarcasm in the headline there. With shooting not having commenced as yet, and the fact that James Cameron will shoot four movies at once, the filmmaker has revealed that Avatar 2 will definitely not be released in 2018.
In a recent interview with The Star, Cameron said:
“Well, 2018 is not happening. We haven’t announced a firm release date. What people have to understand is that this is a cadence of releases. So we’re not making Avatar 2. We’re making Avatar 2, 3, 4 and 5. It’s an epic undertaking. It’s not unlike building the Three Gorges dam. (Laughs) So I know where I’m going to be for the next eight years of my life. It’s not an unreasonable time frame if you think about it. It took us four-and-a-half years to make one movie and now we’re making four. We’re full tilt boogie right now. This is my day job and pretty soon we’ll be 24-7. We’re pretty well designed on all our creatures and sets. It’s pretty exciting stuff. I wish I could share with the world. But we have to preserve a certain amount of showmanship and we’re going to draw that curtain when the time is right.”
Fox had announced that Avatar 2 was penciled in for a December 2018 release date for the first new movie, nine years after the release of the original, which is still the highest grossing movie of all time. Further sequels had releases set for December 2020, December 2022, and December 2023.
There is, of course, ten year anniversary coming up for the first film, so maybe they’ll tie it in with that. More as it becomes apparent.
