It looks like our return to the Avatar franchise has been pushed back, as actress Sigourney Weaver suggested. The first of the four sequels was planned to release in December 2018, followed by the following sequels in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Initially, the films were meant to begin releasing in 2015, then 2015, then 2016, 2017, and 2018, but now, we are pushing the release date even further back. Speaking to Toronto Star, director James Cameron said the following when asked if 2018 was still the target for the release of Avatar 2:
Well, 2018 is not happening. We haven’t announced a firm release date. What people have to understand is that this is a cadence of releases. So we’re not making Avatar 2. We’re making Avatar 2, 3, 4 and 5. It’s an epic undertaking. It’s not unlike building the Three Gorges dam. (Laughs) So I know where I’m going to be for the next eight years of my life. It’s not an unreasonable time frame if you think about it. It took us four-and-a-half years to make one movie and now we’re making four. We’re full tilt boogie right now. This is my day job and pretty soon we’ll be 24-7. We’re pretty well designed on all our creatures and sets. It’s pretty exciting stuff. I wish I could share with the world. But we have to preserve a certain amount of showmanship and we’re going to draw that curtain when the time is right.
Director James Cameron detailed the Avatar sequels to be a family saga and that he pretty much "overwrote" what had initially been planned to be a trilogy.
