Avatar 2: James Cameron threw out an early script after working on it for a year

Director James Cameron‘s Avatar: The Way of Water is finally set to reach theatres on December 16th – two days shy of the thirteenth anniversary of the first Avatar‘s release. Speaking with The Times, Cameron gave a couple reasons for why so many years went by between sequels, other than how technically complicated Avatar movies are to make. For one thing, he was busy doing some deep-ocean exploration, which is something he likes doing better than he enjoys making movies. He says he only makes movies to fund his ocean expeditions. Another reason for the long wait: he spent a year working on a script for Avatar 2 / Avatar: The Way of Water that he ended up scrapping.

Cameron explained,

When I sat down with my writers to start Avatar 2, I said we cannot do the next one until we understand why the first one did so well. We must crack the code of what the hell happened. … All films work on different levels. The first is surface, which is character, problem and resolution. The second is thematic. What is the movie trying to say? But Avatar also works on a third level, the subconscious. I wrote an entire script for the sequel, read it and realized that it did not get to level three. Boom. Start over. That took a year.”

Directed by Cameron from a screenplay he wrote with Josh Friedman, the Avatar sequel that did end up getting made has the following synopsis:

Set 14 years after the events of the first film, Avatar: The Way of Water will find Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) having started a family, but when the Resources Development Administration (RDA) returns to Pandora, the family is forced to flee to the reef. Jake and Neytiri’s family includes Na’vi kids Neteyam (Jamie Flatter), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and Tuktirey (Trinity Bliss), but they also have Miles Socorro (Jack Champion). Also known as Spider, the young boy was born at the military base on Pandora but was too small to return to Earth so he has been raised by Jake and Neytiri.

And there is more Avatar to come. Avatar: The Way of Water‘s 2022 release will be followed by Avatar 3 on December 20, 2023. If these first two sequels do well enough, we’ll also be getting Avatar 4 on December 18, 2026, and Avatar 5 on December 22, 2028.

Are you looking forward to watching Avatar expand into a franchise? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.