How ‘Avatar’ Sequel Will Go Underwater

Now that James Cameron has confirmed plans to make two sequels to his $2 billion-plus monster hit “Avatar,” the movie industry is clamoring to know about the cutting-edge technologies he’ll be using to make the fantasy world of Pandora even more dazzling.

Cameron hasn’t said anything about the technologies yet, but he has indicated that the first sequel will take place underwater. The U.K’s Daily Mail reported that the director “has commissioned a bespoke submarine, built of high-tech, man-made composite materials and powered by electric motors, which will be capable of surviving the tremendous pressures at a depth of seven miles, from which he will shoot 3-D footage that may be incorporated in Avatar’s sequel.”

Terrence Masson says Cameron, like “Star Wars” creator George Lucas, has a “history of inventing and pushing new technologies. I’m betting [Cameron is] going to push camera manufacturers to make smaller, lighter, cheaper, more accurate 3-D stereography rigs.”

Right now, 3-D camera rigs are heavy and bulky, so it’s hard to do several camera set ups a day, says Masson, who has worked on animation at Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic and consulted for Disney and DreamWorks.

Richard Weinberg, a professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, says Cameron likely will use computer-generated technologies as well. “I can only guess he’ll do a combination of simulation of underwater characters and environments and take some cameras underwater like he did in ‘Titanic,’ ” Weinberg says. “If you’re filming underwater, you can only see so far. I would expect that there would be an integration of simulated underwater landscape with whatever he’s able to capture.”

Masson also says that Cameron will be sure to squeeze the most out of existing movie technologies for the “Avatar” sequels. “He optimizes existing technologies, and takes stuff out of the esoteric and bleeding edge and makes it work well on large scale productions,” Masson says.

The second “Avatar” movie is scheduled to begin filming next year and hit movie theaters in 2014; the third installment is slated for 2015.

Special peek into secret world of Avatar

MOVIE fans sick at the thought of waiting four years to revisit Pandora in the Avatar sequel can at least discover the secrets behind the blockbuster in the extended collector's edition.

Devotees can dive into the world of the Na'vi, view deleted scenes, interviews with the creators and an extended cut of Avatar and learn how the film was made.

The extended collector's edition of Avatar, to be released on Wednesday, will take viewers behind the scenes.

It reveals the film's amnio tank, where humans are reborn as avatars, took five months to build and caused hours of grief for a team of 120 props makers.

Avatar's creative director, Sir Richard Taylor, from Weta Digital, said a prototype of every prop and object used in the film was made - from Na'vi weapons and jewellery to military and medical equipment.

"We had to evolve a whole ecology, a new world," he said. "In reality, there was no need to make anything physically [because the film uses computer-generated imagery, or CGI] but James Cameron was adamant - if it wasn't made physically, how would the digital effects team be able to create it?"

The Oscar and Golden Globe-winning epic Avatar, seen by more than 310 million people worldwide, is the highest-grossing film ever, taking $2.7 billion at the box office.

Avatar producer Jon Landau said the extended collector's edition revealed all the secrets of making Avatar to encourage aspiring film-makers to embrace modern technology and the benefits of CGI.

Picture: The Avatar mosaic made from 4000 Blu-ray discs

Laura Hadland, just weeks after creating a "toast" mosaic from over 9000 pieces of toast has moved on to her next project, an Avatar mosaic that uses 4000 Blu-ray discs.
Hadland says 20th Century Fox commercially printed her the discs (in the colors she needed) and from there the mosaic was completed within a few hours.



The mosaic was a gift to her husband, who was a big fan of the movie.

It was put together on the floor of the London Film Museum.

Avatar is the top selling movie of all time, making $2.8 billion worldwide. Sequels are slated for 2013 and later.

Ending Scene Is Key to ‘Avatar’ Sequels: Pregnant Na’vis

“Avatar” 2 and 3 don’t drop in theaters until December 2014 and 2015, but fans of the first James Cameron film looking for hints as to what to expect may find the answer in one of the never-before-seen final scenes.

As Yahoo! Movies points out, James Cameron may have included the beginning of a new storyline in the ending of “Avatar,” even if it did not get played on cinema screens.

The “Extended Collector’s Edition,” out this month, includes a scene that plays right after the theatrical ending – and in which one Na’vi woman is shown with a belly bump, while it is being suggested that Neytiri will soon be a mom too.

After the scene that shows the Na’vis herding the humans towards their ship, seeing them on their way home, the film immediately cuts to a scene that is clearly only in the first production stages.

“Cut to somewhat jerky animation of blue children gamboling in a pond,” Yahoo! Movies writes. Since the narrator is speaking about rebirth and how the forest will heal, it’s no wonder children are shown.

“The forest will heal. And so will the hearts of the people. New life keeps the energy flowing like the birth of the world,” the voice of the narrator says.

Aside from the use of “birth” there, the images too suggest that there are little Na’vi babies on the way – and that Neytiri too will have one.

“As we hear this, Jake rises from the water clutching a fish, sees Neytiri, his bonded brain-braid soul mate, and places a hand on her tummy,” Yahoo! writes.

The conclusion can’t be but one: Neytiri is pregnant, which means the sequel (and probably threequel, too) will also include subplots with the younger generation.

“It sure does look like it. If she is pregnant, does this mean that that Jakesully’s offspring will be the center of the other two movies in the ‘Avatar’ trilogy? Whatever the answers, Cameron is reportedly keeping his mouth shut on the matter,” the same report notes.

How the Amazon Rainforest Made Avatar 2 a Priority

One of the things that didn't get as much attention as it probably should have about the announcement that James Cameron has agreed to make Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 his next projects was that, in order to convince him, 20th Century Fox made a "huge donation" to his environmental green fund. If that doesn't underline Cameron's dedication to the cause, then perhaps A Message To Pandora will. (See all of Techland's Avatar coverage)

Pandora, a 20 minute documentary that appears on the special edition Blu-Ray of Avatar released next Tuesday, is the result of two trips Cameron made to the Amazon rainforest at the invitation of the organization Amazon Watch and documents Cameron's experience meeting the indigenous and riverbank communities whose way of life is threatened by Brazil's $17 million Belo Monte Dam project - A project that would divert the flow of the Xingu River and, in the process, displace more than 20,000 people.

James Cameron heads back to Pandora

Forget Cleopatra – it's all about Pandora for director James Cameron.

Though he had hoped to direct Angelina Jolie in a 3-D biopic about the Queen of the Nile, Cameron will now have his hands full with not one, but two sequels to his 2009 blockbuster "Avatar," according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The first "Avatar," starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, and Sigourney Weaver, told the story of a greedy corporation trying to rob the moon Pandora and its blue Na'vi people of the rich mineral unobtainium. The 3-D sensation went on to gross $2.8 billion worldwide.

"We'll continue to follow the same people on the same planet," producer Jon Landau revealed at the 3-D Media Markets conference yesterday, adding that the films could venture into new territory. "We might go underwater."

The "Avatar" sequels are set for release in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

Exclusive: Jon Landau Talks Avatar 2

With Avatar's extended Collector's Edition soon to hit shelves, Empire grabbed some time with producer Jon Landau, turning up with a dream-machine and a knock-out jab to penetrate his subsconcious and extract info on the sequels. In the end we just asked questions instead, including one or two on those rumours that Avatar 2 will take us to the depths of Pandora's oceans.

"Water will be a part of the movie, but it won’t be all of the movie, " Landau told us. "There’s been a lot of rumours that it’s an underwater movie – it’s not. Just like the Floating Mountains, and the Na’vi's interaction with the mountains, were a part of Avatar, it’ll be the same type of thing."

Read into that what you will, but we can probably file a Gungan-style tribe of subsea frog people under 'unlikely'. Sighs of relief there, then. So will the sequel launch Jake Sully into orbit and on to new planets? No, says Landau. "I think the next movie will stay on Pandora. That’d be my guess. Not all the answers are there yet, but I think we’re happy with Pandora."

Landau also stressed that Avatar 2 won't leave narrative theads hanging, Hallows-style. "The next [film] will kick off where the next last one ended, but, just like Avatar resolved itself and doesn’t feel like a set-up to another movie, you don’t want Avatar 2 to feel like a set up for 3."

So with Cameron and his Lightstorm partner heading back to Pandora for the next few years, where does that leave manga adaptation Battle Angel and freediving drama The Dive? "They’re further-out projects," says Landau. "Neither one has that shooting script yet and both are really worthy projects to make."