As if you didn’t know by now, the first landing of the Avatar DVD assault will take place on Thursday, which also happens to be Earth Day. James Cameron has naturally been chatting about the film, its impact and releasing new nuggets about the sequel like a pill slowly pumping expectation into our veins. His big plan for an expanded story? Diving beneath the surface of Pandora’s oceans.
Nattering away to the LA Times, Cameron outlined where he sees the adventures of Jake, Neytiri and the rest heading in future films. “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.
“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, which will be equally rich and diverse and crazy and imaginative, but it just won’t be a rainforest. I’m not saying we won’t see what we’ve already seen; we’ll see more of that as well.”
The sequel, according to Cameron, will take less time to shoot, though don’t expect him to pump it out over a few months in his pool at home… “The challenge on the next Avatar 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.”
And despite the film arriving on DVD and Blu-Ray this week (albeit a bare-bones release that precedes a fully loaded multi-disc edition set for November), he and his team are hard at work on the planned theatrical re-release, which will hit cinemas this summer. “We’re working on finishing an additional six minutes of the film - which includes a lot of Weta work - for a theatrical re-release in August. We were sold out of our Imax performances right up to the moment until they were contractually obligated to switch to Alice In Wonderland, so we know we left money on the table there."
Yes, Avatar left money on the table, which it clearly needs. So how excited are you to dive into the world of Pandora again?