Avatar fans you need not wait any longer, just 2 years, it’s finally here and production will be done in New Zealand.
James Cameron, producer Jon Landau and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key have announced that all three Avatar sequels will be filmed in New Zealand. The Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce had this to say about the announcement.
“The Avatar sequels will provide hundreds of jobs and thousands of hours of work directly in the screen sector as well as jobs right across the economy.”
The director reveals that he originally wanted to explore other worlds in Pandora’s solar system, but now he just plans to show fans more of Pandora itself.
“It’s going to be a lot of new imagery and a lot of new environments and creatures across Pandora. We’re blowing it out all over the place. At first I thought I was going to take it onto other worlds as well, in the same solar system, but it turned out not to be necessary. I mean the Pandora that we have imagined will be a fantasy land that is going to occupy people for decades to come, the way I see it.”
He also cleared up a rumor that Avatar 2 will be set entirely underwater, which is not the case.
“There’s a fair bit of underwater stuff. It’s been inaccurately said that the second film takes place underwater. That’s not true. There are underwater scenes and surface-water scenes having to do with indigenous ocean cultures that are distributed across the three films.”
It isn’t immediately clear when production will begin in New Zealand, but it was revealed that production on Avatar 2, Avatar 3 and Avatar 4 will take place over a nine-month shoot. The budget for all three movies combined is expected to exceed a whopping $1 billion.
Avatar was released December 18th, 2009 and stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Joel Moore, Giovanni Ribisi, Michelle Rodriguez, Laz Alonso. The film is directed by James Cameron.
Avatar 2 comes to theaters November 2016
Avatar 3 comes to theaters November 2017
Avatar 4 comes to theaters November 2018
