Filmmaker James Cameron has confirmed that filming on the live-action portions of at least two of the upcoming “Avatar” sequels is either complete or near completion.
Filming on the blockbuster sequel was able to resume in June in New Zealand. Four sequels in total are planned though it’s thought the second and third are being filmed essentially together before going on an extended break and resuming work on the fourth and fifth.
Cameron recently spoke with his friend and frequent collaborator Arnold Schwarzenegger for an interview on the actor’s YouTube channel where he spoke about the challenges that come with finishing live-action production during the current pandemic:
“We lost about four and a half months of production. As a result of that, we’ve rolled around one more full year for a release in December of 2022. That’s been announced already. Now that doesn’t mean I have an extra year to finish the film, because the day we deliver Avatar 2 we’ll just start working on finishing Avatar 3.
So where we are right now, I’m down in New Zealand shooting. We’re shooting the remainder of the live-action. We’ve got about ten percent left to go. We’re a hundred percent complete on Avatar 2 and we’re sort of ninety-five percent complete on Avatar 3. So we’re very lucky in that we chose this as our production site years ago.”
Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang are returning from the original movie while Kate Winslet, David Thewlis, Michelle Yeoh, Jemaine Clement, Oona Chaplin, Edie Falco and Cliff Curtis are joining the cast of the sequels.
The films remain on track for December 2022, 2024, 2026 and 2028 releases.