‘Avatar 3’ Has ‘Greater Character Depth’ and ‘Avatar 4’ Has a Six-Year Time Jump, Reveals James Cameron: Filming Continues ‘After Three Is Released’
James Cameron recently told People magazine that “Avatar 3” is “right on track” for its December 2025 release date. The film has been worked on since before the second “Avatar” movie, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” opened in theaters in December 2022 and became the third-highest grossing film in history with $2.3 billion worldwide. Cameron shot “Avatar 3” and chunks of “Avatar 4” concurrently with “The Way of Water” to ensure age continuity among his characters.
“We did the [motion capture] capture on three and the live-action photography on three as an intermingled production with [‘Avatar: The Way of Water’], and we even did part of movie four because our young characters are all going to have a big time jump in movie four,” Cameron said.
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“We see them and then we go away for six years and we come back,” he added about the “Avatar 4” time jump. “And so the part where we come back is the part we haven’t shot yet. So we’ll start on that after three is released.”
Cameron has the rest of “Avatar 4” and the entirety of “Avatar 5” left to shoot. The third movie was originally going to arrive in 2024, but Disney delayed the franchise and scheduled “Avatar 3” for a Dec. 19, 2025, opening. “Avatar 4” is on track for Dec. 21, 2029, followed by “Avatar 5” on Dec. 19, 2031. Based on this timeline, the final “Avatar” movie will premiere 22 years after the original 2009 blockbuster.
“Three is actually much more straightforward than two,” Cameron told People about the post-production process. “Two, we got hit with the pandemic in the middle of it and we were interrupted, and then we had to reboot and reboot the production and all that sort of thing. And it was a scramble to get it done.”
Not much is known about “Avatar 3,” including its official title, outside of Cameron teasing that it will introduce a more antagonistic race of Na’vi. Franchise producer Jon Landau said in an Empire magazine interview earlier this year that “Avatar 3” will introduce the Ash People, described by the publication as “an aggressive, volcanic race” of Na’vi whose leader is Varang, played by “Game of Thrones” alum and Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter Oona Chaplin.
“There are good humans and there are bad humans,” Landau said at the time. “It’s the same thing on the Na’vi side. Oftentimes, people don’t see themselves as bad. What is the root cause of how they evolve into what we perceive as bad? Maybe there are other factors there that we aren’t aware of.”
In an interview with GQ magazine, Cameron said that by expanding the story of “Avatar” across numerous films he’s able to craft a franchise that prioritizes its character as much as it does its technological breakthroughs.
“The big [creative] advance in [‘Avatar 3’] is just going to be greater character depth,” Cameron said. “We’re seeing new cultures, new creatures — all the same stuff you’d expect from an ‘Avatar’ movie, but the whole idea of this cycle of films is to live with these people and go on this epic journey with them. So I think it’s not about, ‘We’re going to show you the best water [VFX] ever done’ — but you get more into the heart and soul of the characters. And there’s some very interesting new characters that come in as well. This is a journey over time. It will play out through movie three, into movie four and movie five. There’s an epic cycle to the whole thing.”
Landau’s Empire interview first revealed “a big time jump” for “Avatar 4,” but now we know from Cameron that it occurs at some point during the film and not at the beginning. Landau also let it slip to Gizmodo that “Avatar 5” will bring the franchise to Earth for the first time, saying, “We go to it to open people’s eyes, open Neytiri’s eyes, to what exists on Earth.”
The first two “Avatar” movies are now available to stream on Disney+.
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