When you make a movie that turns out to be the highest grossing film of all time, you kind of have to make a sequel. Fortunately for James Cameron, the second time he did it, it WASN’T about a ship that can’t sink twice, so that option is on the table.
Whether you think AVATAR has the potential to be a viable STAR WARS-ish universe or not, the sequels are coming, and Cameron has previously announced the second and third installment as his next projects. But where does that leave all his other films?
We’ve heard him attached to a million different movies, but one is further along than all the others. That would be BATTLE ANGEL, and despite his busy schedule, Cameron maintains he still wants to make it down the road. Here’s him speaking to Collider:
“I’m obviously going to be pretty busy for the next five years [with Avatar 2 and 3]. And so I had to consider, do I hand this project off to another director? And then I thought, ‘No, I love it too much.’…It’s such a rich world. What I’m going to do is take the spine story and use elements from the first four books. So, the Motorball from books three and four, and parts of the story of one and two will all be in the movie. We’re not that far down the line.
“We have a very good script and we’ve done a lot of production design. We’ve done about a year of production design and we’ve put together an art reel that shows the arc of the film.”
Personally, I’d be more pumped to see Cameron’s vision for a new film, especially one that sounds as badass as BATTLE ANGEL, but I get he’s trying to make a franchise out of AVATAR. You may disagree, but can you really blame him?