Does James Cameron plan to shoot the Avatar sequels back to back?

You guys wanted more AVATAR news today, right?

During a conversation with MTV, James Cameron said that AVATAR parts 2 and 3 could be filmed back to back. But first, he must finish work on his AVATAR novel that he is quite focused on getting out.

Cameron says that they are still working out details for the sequel and that he is currently making notes on it. He talks about his plans for the novel, “I never had a chance to get the novel done while we were making the movie, and I always intended to. I didn’t want to do a cheesy novelization, where some hack comes in and kind of makes shit up. I wanted to do something that was a legitimate novel that was inside the characters’ heads and didn’t have the wrong culture stuff, the wrong language stuff, all that.”

When the novel comes out, Cameron hopes that others will help him flesh out the universe. He wants to make sure that, for example, story arcs for Jake and Grace are developed in specific ways, “I don’t mind opening the universe, but I just don’t want that to happen until I’ve got more meat on the bones. … That all needs to be filled in before other writers can come in and run with it.”

Novel aside, Cameron talked about the possibility of the second and third installments being filmed at once, “We’re actually talking about that. That’s not a decision yet. That is something that makes a lot of sense, given the nature of these productions, because we can bank all the [motion] capture and then go back and do cameras over a period of time.” It would seem like a single production for two films would be tiring, but Cameron thinks it wouldn’t be so bad, “The way these back-to-back productions fall apart is that you’re trying to do two live-action films back to back, and you’re working on it for a year and a half, shooting. Everyone is dead. It’s not humanly possible. This type of film, it absolutely would work.”