James Cameron, Avatar franchise director, writer, tells MTV of his 'Avatar 4' vision.
"I have an idea for a fourth," Cameron told MTV News at a press event for "Titanic" on September of 2012.
"I haven't really put pen to paper on it, but basically it goes back to the early expeditions of Pandora, and kind of what went wrong with the humans and the Na'vi and what that was like to be an explorer and living in that world."
"Because when we drop in, even in the first film in 'Avatar 1,' as it will be known in the future, we're dropping into a process that's 35 years in to a whole colonization," Cameron continued of his interest in an "Avatar" prequel. "That will complete an arc and if that leads into more, we'll start, not imitating 'Star Wars,' but it's a logical thing to do because we'll have completed the thematic arc by the end of three. The only thing left to do is go back to see what it was like on those first expeditions and create some new characters that then become legacy characters in later films. It's a plan."
But before going to "Avatar 4", they need first to finish the previous sequels.
"We've spent two years refining the whole pipeline," said the filmmaker. "It was a hideously complex process to make that film and a lot has been said about that, but we don't want it to be done in the same prototypical way as the first one, we want it to be a much smoother workflow just for creativity reasons."
"We'll start, not imitating 'Star Wars,'" Cameron added, "but it's a logical thing to do because we'll have completed the thematic arc by the end of three."
"You know, Peter Jackson had it easy, he already had the books," Cameron said. "He had the books. Now if I had a time machine I could go forward and watch the movies and then come back, but I don't!"
According to Variety, Cameron will work together with Josh Friedman ("War of the Worlds"), Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver ("Rise of the Planets of the Apes"), and Shane Salerno ("Savages") on the screenplays for "Avatar 2," "Avatar 3" and "Avatar 4."
Twentieth Century Fox will release all three films over the course of three years, from 2016 through 2018, which are expected to land every December.
