The actor who plays Jake Sully in the franchise also cryptically says that director James Cameron 'is building the ship to Pandora.'
- Oct 19, 2013
AceShowbiz - "Avatar 2" will begin production next fall. Sam Worthington, who plays the male lead Jake Sully in the first film and will reprise the role in the second one, revealed in an interview with Australian radio station Nova 96.9 that the filming would kick off October 2014.
In the meantime, James Cameron is still busy with pre-production preparation. "They are still writing it. I think Jim is building the ship to Pandora to be honest. We are going to start this time next year and we will do two, three and four. I'll be grateful if it finishes," so he said.
The second "Avatar" installment is slated for December 2016 with Josh Friedman tapped to pen the script, "Avatar 3" is scheduled for December 2017 with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver as the screenwriters, and "Avatar 4" is planned for 2018 with Shane Salerno as the scribe.
Those three new movies are expected to be filmed one after the other. The plan reportedly is to complete the shootings within a year ahead of each new installment's annual release.
Of expanding the franchise into four movies, the director once said, "In writing the new films, I've come to realize that Avatar's world, story and characters have become even richer than I anticipated, and it became apparent that two films would not be enough to capture everything I wanted to put on screen."
There is not much information on the plotline of the second "Avatar" pic, but it is expected to pick up where the first film left off when Jake begins a new life with Princess Neytiri after permanently transferring his consciousness to his Na'vi avatar. Zoe Saldana will be back taking on the female lead role.
Other cast hasn't been announced. Arnold Schwarzenegger was previously rumored signing up to play the villain, but his casting report was quickly denied by 20th Century Fox.
