Saturday, February 12, 2011

Will 'Avatar' Sequels Shoot Back-To-Back? James Cameron Weighs In


Director also talks about getting 'inside the characters' heads' for his 'Avatar' novel.

It's not enough that "Avatar" is now the biggest movie of all time, winning three Oscars and grossing unprecedented box-office dollars. To better serve the film-going public, the powers that be at Fox will be re-releasing the film in 3-D and 3-D IMAX on August 27. MTV News was lucky enough to steal a few moments of maestro James Cameron's time to talk about the reported "Avatar" novel and whether he'll shoot the proposed two sequels back-to-back.

"We're still working on deals [for 'Avatar 2']," Cameron told MTV News. "We don't start the movie until we get the deals worked out."

Fair enough. But what about the rumored sequel "scriptment"? "I'm making notes. I'm not sitting idle," Cameron said. "But really, what I'm working on primarily is the novel. I never had a chance to get the novel done while we were making the movie, and I always intended to. I didn't want to do a cheesy novelization, where some hack comes in and kind of makes sh-- up. I wanted to do something that was a legitimate novel that was inside the characters' heads and didn't have the wrong culture stuff, the wrong language stuff, all that."

Cameron went on to say that the novel will serve as a "bible" for other writers to come in and riff on for their own "Avatar"-based stories.

"I don't mind opening the universe, but I just don't want that to happen until I've got more meat on the bones," he said, adding that he'd like to fill in some of the specific details about the company, what's happening on Earth and Grace and Jake's backstories. "That all needs to be filled in before other writers can come in and run with it."

Regarding his plans and discussions about two proposed sequels, we asked if he'll shoot them back-to-back. "We're actually talking about that. That's not a decision yet," Cameron revealed. "That is something that makes a lot of sense, given the nature of these productions, because we can bank all the [motion] capture and then go back and do cameras over a period of time."

He added that the nature of their filmmaking process lends itself more naturally to a back-to-back shooting schedule, versus that of other live-action productions.

"The way these back-to-back productions fall apart is that you're trying to do two live-action films back to back, and you're working on it for a year and a half, shooting. Everyone is dead. It's not humanly possible," Cameron said of live-action shoots. "This type of film, it absolutely would work."

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