James Cameron is currently hard at work doing additional shooting on his long-gestating Avatar sequels – and he has some gravelly-voiced company on the set in the form of Vin Diesel. The action star looks set to swap speed racing, blind butchering, and I Am Groot-ing for… some kind of role in the Avatar universe. Diesel shared a video on Instagram of himself and Cameron on set, where he strongly suggested – without flat-out confirming, it must be said – that he’s finally getting to work with one of Hollywood’s biggest directors.
“It’s long overdue, there is one person in Hollywood I’ve always wanted to work with and learn from,” says Diesel, “and so, all things come, I guess, to those that wait.” And it sounds like he’s seen a decent amount, as Cameron quips: “We’re actually gonna give him the flashy thing from Men In Black when he leaves here so he has no memory whatsoever of what he’s seen.” With the back-to-back Avatar 2 and 3 performance capture already having been completed, Cameron is currently shooting the live-action portions of the film – so it’s likely that Diesel will appear in his usual bulked-up form, rather than getting all blue-skinned. Considering the militaristic angle of the first film, it’s easy to imagine Diesel taking a burly, camo-heavy role here – but like all things Avatar, expect it to remain top secret for a good while yet.
Speaking to Empire about the current part of the shoot, Cameron said: “[Performance-capture] is the vast majority of the characters, and that is the vast majority of the running time of the film, but that pesky little live-action component is going to cost me five months of my life, across the two movies.”
Avatar 2 is currently set to arrive in cinemas in December 2020, with Avatar 3 to follow a year later in 2021.
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