Remember how there was a whopping 13-year gap between the first and second Avatars? Don’t think James Cameron won’t be able to crank out a bunch more. He already has principal photography for the third one in the can, though it’s still not dropping until next December (unless it gets pushed again). But what of Avatar 4, or Avatar 5? Those probably aren’t seeing the light of day for a good while. But at least if one of its stars can be trusted, it will all be worth the wait.
“It’s going to be amazing. ‘Avatar 3,’ it’s going to be amazing, and ‘Avatar 4’ and ‘5’, it just gets crazy,” Zoe Saldana, who plays Na’vi Neytiri, recently told Collider. She continued:
“It’s true. It really does. [James Cameron has] blown our mind. This is his legacy project. We all thought it was ‘Titanic’ and it turned out that ‘Avatar’ is his legacy. And for us to be a part of something so groundbreaking and trailblazing, it’s like it’s a legacy for us, too. So I’m excited to go back. We go back to work next week, so I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone.”
But why should the Avatars stop with 4 or 5? Cameron, who’s pushing 70, has plans for even more.
“We’re fully written through movie five, and I’ve got ideas for six and seven, although I’ll probably be handing the baton on at that point,” Cameron told People. “Mortality catches up. But I mean, we’re enjoying what we’re doing. We’re loving it. We get to work with great people.”
So perhaps Avatar may continue even without Cameron in the director’s chair. The filmmaker discussed another big issue with the franchise: longtime fans who are a little nonplussed that the guy who helmed two Terminators, one Alien (i.e., Aliens), The Abyss, True Lies, and, of course, Titanic is now living exclusively on Pandora:
“People are always asking us, ‘So why did you just keep working in the same…’ Why did [George] Lucas keep working in the same thing? Why did [Gene] Roddenberry keep working in the same thing? Because when you connect with people, why would you squander that? Why would you start over with something else that might not connect?”
Let’s imagine that Avatar 3 still comes out in 2025, three years after Avatar 2. If Cameron and team stay at that click, 4 won’t come out until 2028, 5 in 2031, 6 in 2034, and 7 in 2037. Cosmic stuff! And Saldana herself is already appalled at how old she’ll be when 5 arrives. And perhaps one of them can be called The Seed Bearer.