With Avatar: The Way of Water answering the question of whether audiences still care about Avatar, we now look forward to three additional films James Cameron has planned. While what we know about Avatar 3 includes a release date is going to make us wait two years, there’s a lot of filming left to do that won’t even start until after the next movie comes out. However, it’s actually slightly less than two full movies worth of filming, as we know that Cameron filmed part of Avatar 4 alongside two and three, and he’s talking about why.
The initial plan, as we learned it, was that Cameron was going to film Avatar 2 and 3 in one block, and then film Avatar 4 and 5 later, but he actually filmed part of Avatar 4 in the first shoot, because he wanted to get the cast of young actors at their current ages, because while Avatar 4 will apparently start shortly after part three, there will then be a time jump. Cameron recently told People…
We did the [motion capture] capture on three and the live-action photography on three as an intermingled production with [‘Avatar: The Way of Water’], and we even did part of movie four because our young characters are all going to have a big time jump in movie four.
Especially now that we know that Avatar is still a box office winner, it makes one wonder why Cameron was waiting until after Avatar 3 was released to start filming the last two movies, as it turns out, the reason is that he wants the actors to age. We now know that six years will pass between scenes in Avatar 4. Cameron continued…
We see them and then we go away for six years and we come back. And so the part where we come back is the part we haven’t shot yet. So we’ll start on that after three is released.
While this isn’t the first time Cameron has discussed the time jump, I initially didn’t pay it much mind, but hearing about it again, I am starting to have questions. With four movies being written, Cameron set his time jump part way through one movie, rather than setting it between films. There’s clearly a reason for that, but what exactly is it?
Six years isn’t nearly as big as the time jump between the first and second Avatar movies, but it is certainly significant. Cameron has talked about the fact that some of the Avatar films may actually take place on Earth, so perhaps the six-year jump will be the space travel that sees our heroes make the trip to another world. Whether they make that trip willingly is another question entirely.