James Cameron to film Avatar sequels in New Zealand; reveals they will be Godfather-esque

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

With all the superhero franchises, giant lizards, dinosaur theme parks, and galaxies far, far away on the horizon it’s easy to forget that the biggest movie of all time, AVATAR, has a batch of sequels plowing forward as well. For director James Cameron, part of that process is finding a home for the production, which he’s just announced will be New Zealand, which has commonly doubled as Peter Jackson‘s Middle Earth in both the LOTR and HOBBIT films. In an interview with the AP, Cameron discussed the story setting and the “family” aspect of the upcoming back-to-back sequels.

On what we’ll be seeing of Pandora in the sequel and whether or not it will be “off-world”:

“It’s going to be a lot of new imagery and a lot of new environments and creatures across Pandora. We’re blowing it out all over the place. At first I thought I was going to take it onto other worlds as well, in the same solar system, but it turned out not to be necessary. I mean the Pandora that we have imagined will be a fantasy land that is going to occupy people for decades to come, the way I see it.”

On the planned underwater sequences of the sequels:

“There’s a fair bit of underwater stuff. It’s been inaccurately said that the second film takes place underwater. That’s not true. There are underwater scenes and surface-water scenes having to do with indigenous ocean cultures that are distributed across the three films.”

On THE GODFATHER famiy aspect of the sequels:

“It was very Jake-centric. His story seen through his eyes,” Cameron said. “We spread it around quite a bit more as we go forward. It’s really the story of his family, the family that he creates on Pandora. His extended family. So think of it as a family saga like ‘The Godfather.'”

Interesting stuff. It’s kind of popular to hate on AVATAR, which is ironic as it’s the most successful movie of all time. I know I’ve taken my potshots in the past, but when it comes down to it, I’ll be there for the sequels. Cameron is an exciting filmmaker and I can’t imagine a time that I’d ignore his work, even if this new franchise is a bit derivative. Visually speaking, you know the movie will make love to your eyeballs and sometimes that’s a worthy enough experience to venture out to the theater.

AVATAR 2 is slated for a December 2016 release with the third and fourth films coming each Christmas through 2018.