Avatar director James Cameron has revealed that he is preparing to start work on the final two movies in the franchise.
The sequel to the 2009 original, Avatar: The Way of Water, was released before Christmas and has just become the seventh highest-grossing film of all time, with realistic expectations of entering the top five in short order.
Cameron has already filmed a third movie, for release at Christmas 2024, and had also penned scripts for a fourth and fifth films - although whether they would be made depended on the box-office performance of The Way Of Water.
Speaking to Chris Wallace's podcast in the last week, Cameron joked: "It looks like I can't wiggle out of this and I'm gonna have to do these other sequels. I know what I'm going to be doing the next six or seven years."
Elaborating on production plans, he continued: "The point is we're going to be okay. I'm sure that we'll have a discussion soon with with the top folks at Disney about the game plan going forward for Avatar 3, which is already in the can – we've already captured and photographed the whole film, so we're in extended post-production to do all that CG magic.
"And then Avatar 4 and 5 are both written. We even have some of 4 in the can. We've begun a franchise at this point. We've begun a saga that can now play out over multiple films."
The Way of Water has now grossed more than $1.7 billion at the global box office but is still dwarfed by the record $2.9 billion managed by the first film.
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