James Cameron may have been delaying the start of his AVATAR sequels for as long as the life span of a Golden Retriever, but the man has finally begun work on his massive undertaking. He’s not alone either, as famed visual effects house – Weta Digital – has announced they are now hard at work creating more photo-realistic blue aliens.
The Oscar-winning visual effects team has kicked off work on the four AVATAR sequels, an endeavor that is said to be costing over $1 billion and will hope to push the boundaries of CGI far beyond what we saw in the first film. Cameron is confident the team is ready for his challenge, saying they’re ready to take themselves further than they’ve ever been before:
What Joe Letteri and Weta Digital bring to these stories is impossible to quantify. Since we made Avatar, Weta continued to prove themselves as doing the best CG animation, the most human, the most alive, the most photo-realistic effects in the world. And of course, that now means I can push them to take it even further.
Indeed they are, and Weta’s Joe Letteri spoke about how working on AVATAR is the perfect job for the company:
Avatar is the ideal type of film for us. Jim’s vision for the world of Pandora was always so much bigger than what we created for the first film. Helping him expand the language of cinema through new narratives set in such an expansive universe is the type of opportunity that rarely comes along twice. Projects like this allow everyone involved to push themselves to do their best work and you can’t ask for anything more than that.
It goes without saying the visuals of AVATAR are masterful, even to this day, so trying to imagine how Weta will top themselves when it comes to the world of Pandora is frankly an impossible task. All we can do is wait (a long time, no doubt) for that first footage and hopefully before that some concept art. Right now only our imagination is enough to picture what’s in store for us, but perhaps even that won’t match the final product.
The first AVATAR sequel arrives December 2020.