James Cameron recently spoke with MTV about his proposed plans for the upcoming Avatar sequels, and the novelization he has been working on since the first film debuted to record numbers last December.

The acclaimed director doesn't rule out shooting Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 back-to-back. In fact, he would prefer it that way. Here is what he had to say about the future of the franchise:

"Avatar 2? We are still working on deals. We don't start the movie until we get the deals done. I am making notes. I am not sitting idle."

About shooting both upcoming sequels back-to-back, the director said:

"Yeah, we are actually talking about that. That is not a decision yet, but that makes a lot of sense, given the nature of these productions. We can bank all of the capture. Then we can go back and do cameras for a long time. We just went back for a DVD supplement. I went back to fill in some gaps on certain scenes that were otherwise complete, but didn't have cameras on certain key moments. We went back and captured stuff that was three years old. But we just shot it the other day. Given the freedom to do that, without having to have the actors present? We can shoot this stuff in a concentrated manner. The way these back-to-back productions fall apart is because you are shooting live action. You are breaking your back, working on it for a year and a half, shooting. Everybody is dead. It's not humanly possible. But with this type of film, it would absolutely work."

Finally, James Cameron had this to say about the long planned novel version of the film:

"What I am working on now primarily is the novel. I always intended to get to the novel while we were making the movie. And I didn't want to do some cheesy novelization, where some hack comes in and makes shit out of something that was a legitimate idea. Ideally that becomes a bible for any other writers that come along and want to riff off it for any other Avatar stories. I don't mind that happening. I just don't want it to happen until I've got more meat on the bones. The film is pretty spare when it comes to the details, the backstory, the company that we have on earth. Grace's backstory. Jake's backstory. That all needs to be filled in before other writers can come in and run with it."

You can hear more of James Cameron's interview at MTV.