'Avatar' Producer Says Sequel Could Be James Cameron's Next Project

'It's going to be hard to walk away from this,' Jon Landau tells MTV News of film's runaway success.

In early December, James Cameron hinted that he might pursue a smaller project following the release of "Avatar," a film the director had been working on in one form or another since the mid-'90s. Then his CGI behemoth actually hit theaters, reeling in $77 million during opening weekend, on its way to $1.6 billion in worldwide box-office receipts and counting.

With the #1 all-time box-office spot now in sight, will Cameron skip that smaller film — possibly "The Dive," the true and tragic story of two free divers who fall in love — in favor of kick-starting work on an "Avatar" sequel? His longtime producing partner Jon Landau hinted to MTV News that a speedy return to the blockbuster franchise is likely.

"I think it's going to be hard to walk away from this," he explained when asked if a sequel would be Cameron's next project. "I think that might be a good bet."

He hastened to add a note of caution, however, saying, "In Hollywood, anything can happen."

To which we might add that when a movie stays in the top box-office slot for five straight weeks, what happens in Hollywood is the directive to pump out more, more, more of that movie as quickly as possible. So how soon can a sequel happen? Landau said Cameron does have strong ideas of where to take the story.

"I think Jim definitely had a couple of different storylines, and it's just honing in on which one he wants to focus in on," he said. "He knows the cast he wants to bring back, he knows how to address it. I'm very excited about it."

Now all Cameron has to do is start writing. "I have a trilogy-scaled arc of story right now, but I haven't really put any serious work into writing a script," he told us last year.