After 13 years,Avatar 2will finally soar into cinemas, hoping to capture the awe and wonder its groundbreaking predecessor did. Now, acclaimed director James Cameron has shared new set photos from the sequel while also opening up about the film’s lengthy production.
Avatar 2is set to take place several years after the first film, with Jake Sully and Neytiri having now formed a family. The two are then forced to abandon their home and explore new territories of Pandora after an old threat (Stephen Lang’s character) returns.
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Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Cameron described the highly anticipated sequel’s production as a crazy journey. “It sounds kind of nuts, the process,” Cameron said. “I mean, if Avatar hadn’t made so much damn money, we’d never do this — because it’s kind of crazy… I do the ocean thing when I’m not making movies. So if I could combine my two greatest loves — one of which is ocean exploration; the other, feature filmmaking — why wouldn’t I?” Cameron pushed the boundaries of filmmaking when his 2009 science-fiction epic,Avatar, soared into theatres, capturing the awe and wonder that films were meant to do. Breaking box office records (Avatarstill ranks as the highest-grossing filmof all time when adjusted for inflation) and winning big at award ceremonies, it was obvious that a sequel would be made shortly after. But Cameron had other plans, though.
Due to the necessity to develop new technologies in order to film breathtaking sequences involving performance capture scenes underwater, a feat that has never been accomplished before in the history of cinema,Avatar’s sequels seemed as if they were delayed every year. When recalling his decision to shoot underwater in a 900,000-gallon tank rather than using other methods, Cameron shared, “My colleagues within the production really lobbied heavily for us to do it ‘dry for wet,’ hanging people on wires. It’s not going to work. It’s not going to look real.’ I even let them run a test, where we captured dry for wet, and then we captured in water, a crude level of our in-water capture. And it wasn’t even close.”
Along with the newAvatar 2photos and behind-the-scenes look at some incredible underwater sequences, Cameron would go on to add his opinion regarding the current landscape of the film industry, hoping thatAvatar 2will draw enough audiences to the big screenthrough its eye-popping visuals and storytelling. “The big issue is: Are we going to make any damn money?” he said. “Big, expensive films have got to make a lot of money. We’re in a new world post-COVID, post-streaming. Maybe those [box office] numbers will never be seen again. Who knows? It’s all a big roll of the dice.”
TheAvatar 2cast will see the return of Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully, Zoe Saldana’s Na’vi princess Neytiri, and Lang’s Colonel Miles Quaritch. CCH Pounder’s Mo’at (Neytiri’s mother), Joel David Moore’s Dr. Norm Spellman, Matt Gerald’s Corporal Lyle Wainfleet, Giovanni Ribisi’s Parker Selfridge are also set to return. Sigourney Weaver, who portrayed Dr. Grace Augustine in the first film, will play an entirely new character, as Augustine died during the conflict between the Na’vi and the humans.Kate Winslet will be reuniting with Cameron, as she joined the cast as a new addition
Avatar 2is finally set to release in theatres on December 16th, 2022.
