James Cameron has suggested that despite new Avatar movies being scheduled to release every two years, that may not actually be the case. During a recent interview with The Wrap, the director noted how Avatar 3 was helped along thanks to its advanced shooting schedule, but Avatar 4 could actually take longer to make and be released. He said:
"They exist. These stories exist. We know exactly what we're doing. We know what these movies are gonna be. We just have to go through the process of getting them done. So, you know ideally two years from now, [Avatar] 3 comes out. Ideally maybe 3 years after that 4 comes out and then ideally maybe a couple years after that 5 comes out. So we won't be away from the market place, so we'll have that sense of a persistent world and ongoing story that I think people want. If they're going to invest in these characters, they're going to invest in this world, we want to give it to them in a regular cadence, ideally, and that was the game plan. That's one of the reasons we were gone so long."
James Cameron Revealed The Tricky Prospect of Shooting the Avatar Story
When it comes to movies involving younger stars in particular, shooting schedules have to be quite tight in order to get everything filmed before they grow up too much. That played a big part in Cameron’s shooting schedule for Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar 3. As he explained:
"We mixed the schedules for 2 and 3 together, based on the types of scenes and the environments. I said, let's just treat it like it's a six-hour miniseries and we're only going to go to Frankfurt once. We're going to shoot all the scenes from 2 and 3 at the same time. That was more or less the motif. Actor availability was an issue as well. Anything that had to be done with a specific actor, we did all the scenes for 2 and 3 together — and a little bit of 4. Because once again, I had to shoot the kids out. They're allowed to age six years in the middle of the story on page 25 of movie 4. So I needed everything before then, and then everything after, we'll do later."
Even though James Cameron had a contingency plan to end his Avatar dream after the third movie if Avatar: The Way of Water bombed at the box office, that doesn’t seem to be something he will have to worry too much about putting into action. Currently his Avatar sequel has crossed $1 billion at the box office after just 12 days on release, and is now setting its sights on taking the top spot for 2022 from Top Gun: Maverick in the coming weeks. As it continues to dominate the worldwide box office, easily outselling everything from the year including movies from Marvel and DC, Avatar: The Way of Water is providing cinemas with the kind of finale Spider-Man: No Way Home brought in 2021.