James Cameron recently updated MTV on the progress of his “Avatar” world, specifically the “Avatar” novel that he’s currently trying to finish, and where the “Avatar” movies currently stand.
“‘Avatar 2′… we’re still working on deals. We don’t start the movie until we get the deals worked out,” he said. “I’m making notes. I’m not sitting idle,” Cameron said. “But really, what I’m working on primarily is the novel.”
He continued, “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 s–t 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.”
Once the novel is out there, Cameron hopes that others will help him in further fleshing out the universe. There are simply key bits of the ongoing story, such as the happenings on Earth and Jake & Grace’s personal arcs, that he wants to make sure are developed in specific ways. “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. … That all needs to be filled in before other writers can come in and run with it.”
And finally, about the sequels, Cameron confirms there is a possibility he might do “Avatar 2″ and “Avatar 3″ back-to-back, but it sure sounds like a certainly now that he’s going to be doing not just one, but two “Avatar” movies.
“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. This type of film, it absolutely would work.”
But he still has to finish the “Avatar” novel first, though, so fans of Pandora can look forward to what might just be the most faithful adaptation of a movie-novel tie-in yet.
Then again, this is James Cameron. The man is a stickler for details, so who expected anything less?
