James Cameron to write an Avatar prequel novel?

I’ve come to expect that I’m gonna be known as that guy who didn’t love AVATAR. The movie’s on track to make James Cameron the next Scrooge McDuck, it was nominated for 9 Academy Awards and has turned 3D from a gimmick to a much more widely used gimmick. I have to accept that, as was the case with LORD OF THE RINGS, I just missed the boat on this one. That said, I can’t imagine anything more laborious than reading an AVATAR novel.

To get things straight, I didn’t hate AVATAR. I’d probably have given it a 6/10 if I was writing a review. I appreciated the visuals for what they were but the story was just lacking in almost every way. So why would I want to read 400 pages of more story? Dunno, but I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who do so James Cameron is stepping behind the typewriter to crank out a new book.

“Jim is going to write a novel himself,” producer Jon Landau told MTV. He made clear this wasn’t going to be a novelization (that, I’m pretty sure, already exists) but an original prequel story that “fills in a lot of things” and will give a “foundation to the world.”

Landau explains, “It would be something that would lead up to telling the story of the movie, but it would go into much more depth about all the stories that we didn’t have time to deal with — like the schoolhouse and Sigourney teaching at the schoolhouse; Jake on Earth and his backstory and how he came here; [the death of] Tommy, Jake’s brother; and Colonel Quaritch, how he ended up there and all that…”

I’ll tell you what…I wasn’t a big fan of the story in the movie but never once did I say to myself, “Boy I wish I had more backstory on what was going on with Sigourney Weaver at that schoolhouse.” To each his own though. I’ve never read a STAR WARS or STAR TREK novel either and those seem wildly popular. Landau adds he expects the novel to come out later this year.