James Cameron has compared the upcoming Avatar sequels to The Lord of the Rings saga.
The director also admitted that he took two years to consider whether or not he even wanted to make any Avatar sequels, following the runaway success of the 2009 movie that became the highest-grossing film of all time.
‘What I said to the Fox regime at the time was, “I’ll do it, but we’ve got to play a larger game here. I don’t want to just do a movie and do a movie and do a movie. I want to tell a bigger story,”’ Cameron tells Empire for their exclusive Avatar: The Way of Water issue.
‘I said, “Imagine a series of novels like ‘The Lord of the Rings’ existed, and we’re adapting them.” Now, that was great in theory, but then I had to go create the frickin’ novels from which to adapt it,’ the director explained.
Cameron added that he had to think ‘long and hard’ before making a deal to return to the world of Pandora and its native Na’vi.
‘When you’ve done something that’s been that transcendent in terms of success, do you really want to go try and do that again? There’s a lot of pressure on it. I thought about it for a good two years before we finally made a deal,’ he says.
The cast for the sequel will see the return of Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang – despite the latter two both dying in the first movie. Newcomers to the world of Pandora will include Kate Winslet and Michelle Yeoh.
While much of the plot is being kept secret for now, we do know that the sequel will spend a lot of time exploring the oceans of Pandora, and will introduce more tribes of Na’vi.
Avatar: The Way of Water will be released on December 16.