As James Cameron is busily working away on the scripts for Avatar 2 & 3, the writer/director took a break to be interviewed on ABC’s Nightline, where he divulged a little about how the films would further explore the planet of Pandora and beyond.
We will see the oceans of Pandora, which we haven’t seen at all and that’s an ecosystem that I’m dying to start designing because it’s going to look spectacular… And there will be other planets as well, besides Pandora. It will be a cornucopia, a treat for the eyes.
Cameron also stated that the films would continue to deal with environmental issues in much the same way that the first one did.
[Avatar 2] narrows the spotlight instead of just nature in general or the rainforest. It focuses it a little more on ocean issues, because we have a planet that’s a blue planet. From a distance, you look at it, the Earth is a lot more blue than it is, you know brown, the land mass. We’re making the oceans unsurvivable for a lot of the species right now. For a lot or reasons. It’s just a way to focus a little energy in that direction.
He also stressed that the further exploration of environmental themes was not going to come at the expense of each film’s story.
I’m not going to become more strident. I’m not going to say, ‘Well, we got away with this much environmental content in the first movie, now there’s double.’ Because I think that would be a mistake. It has to be entertainment first and foremost.
I’m reasonably sure that Cameron has mentioned that the sequels will explore the oceans of Pandora as well as look at the eco-systems of other worlds in that planetary system. However, I think that this is the first time that he has addressed how much of an environmental theme will drive the planned films’ stories. While there were some who thought that the film was heavy-handed in its treatment of the issues it raised, I found it addressed them in a way that didn’t call too much attention to themselves. Given the nature of the story, to not have brought up the environmental issues would have seemed odd.
Avatar 2 and 3 will probably start production sometime late next year with the first of the two films hitting theaters in 2014.
Via Coming Soon.
