Avatar: James Cameron filmed sequels concurrently to avoid “the Stranger Things effect”

Director James Cameron has said that Avatar: The Way of Water (read our review HERE, or watch it in the embed above) needs to make somewhere in the range of $2 billion at the global box office in order to break even. It has earned over $600 million after just one week in release, so it’s chugging its way toward that goal. Regardless of what this Avatar sequel earns, Avatar 3 is already guaranteed to reach theatres next year, on December 20, 2024. It’s the fate of Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 (which have December 18, 2026 and December 22, 2028 release dates) that hangs in the balance. Avatar: The Way of Water, Avatar 3, and the first act of Avatar 4 were all filmed during the same epic production schedule – and while speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Cameron said this was done to avoid “the Stranger Things effect”.

Cameron said that because there are two young actors who play important roles in the sequel: Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, who was around the age of 7 when she was first cast to play the character Tuk in the sequels and is now 13, and Jack Champion, who was cast to play Spider when he was 12 and is now 18. If the sequels hadn’t been filmed concurrently, “you get – and I love Stranger Things – but you get the Stranger Things effect where they’re supposed to still be in high school [but] they look like they’re 27. You know, I love the show. It’s okay, we’ll suspend disbelief. We like the characters, but, you know.“

It also makes sense that Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar 3 would be filmed at the same time because they started out as one script that had to be split in two because the writers had “too much material” to work with.

Directed by Cameron from a screenplay he wrote with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, Avatar: The Way of Water 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.

If you’ve seen Avatar: The Way of Water, let us know what you thought of it by leaving a comment below – and also let us know if you’re looking forward to seeing more of Tuk and Spider in future sequels.