Avatar 2 will explore the oceans on Pandora

Back in September Avatar producer Jon Landau hinted that the sequel could see Cameron taking us into the depths of Pandora, saying “after all, here we are exploring the surface of the planet Pandora. The interior remains to be seen.” Now James Cameron has revealed more details about the sequel, and may require Jake Sully to work on his breaststroke.

From Hero Complex:

Well you’ve already defined what the challenge will be on the next “Avatar” picture, which is to do what we did before at half the price and in half the time. Again, that’s an impossible goal, we won’t accomplish that, but if we can reduce by 25% in both categories, we’ll have really accomplished something. We know our methodology works. We also know it took two years to come up with. It didn’t even become efficient until the last two months of the production. So we were four years into a project before we had this machine running smoothly. So we take a snapshot of that moment in our production and say that’s what we look like on Day 1, we’re going to do better. Now, none of that has anything to do with coming up with a great story or great characters or great new settings and so on. That all is a given. That’s not to say that it’s done yet, it’s a given that we have to do that. But for me, the technical challenge is in improving the process having proved that it works.

We created a broad canvas for the environment of film. That’s not just on Pandora, but throughout the Alpha Centauri AB system. And we expand out across that system and incorporate more into the story – not necessarily in the second film, but more toward a third film. I’ve already announced this, so I might as well say it: Part of my focus in the second film is in creating a different environment – a different setting within Pandora. And I’m going to be focusing on the ocean on Pandora, which will be equally rich and diverse and crazy and imaginative, but it just won’t be a rain forest. I’m not saying we won’t see what we’ve already seen; we’ll see more of that as well.

I suppose we should have seen this coming considering Cameron spent years exploring the oceans and making undersea documentaries after Titanic.

I quite like this idea, and it gives Cameron a chance to showcase some weird and wonderful creatures from the depths. I wonder if he will be putting those performance capture dots on dolphins and whales like he did on horses for Avatar.

I’m also curious about his plans for Avatar 3, which he mentioned in the interview. In Avatar it was all about land, Avatar 2 will explore the oceans, and it seems like Avatar 3 will be a space affair. Mr Cameron if you are reading this (which you probably aren’t) please make Avatar 2 and 3 back-to-back. I think I speak for most Avatards when I say we don’t want to have to wait until 2018 to see the trilogy complete!