The second Avatar movie, Avatar: The Way of Water, has yet to release, but Avatar 3, 4, and 5 are already written and partially filmed. Director, writer, and producer of the series, James Cameron, is not shy about hyping up future sequels. He recently spoke with Collider, highlighting a creative executive’s surprise when he handed in the script for Avatar 4:

While fans still have a while to wait until Avatar 4, which is set to release in 2026, The Way of Water is imminent, releasing on Dec. 16 this year. Avatar 3 is expected in 2024. It may seem unusual that it took 13 years for the first sequel, while it will only take two years for each subsequent sequel, but there’s a reason for that.

“I can’t tell you the details, but all I can say is that when I turned in the script for 2, the studio gave me three pages of notes. And when I turned in the script for 3, they gave me a page of notes, so I was getting better. When I turned in the script for 4, the studio executive, creative executive over the films wrote me an email that said, ‘Holy f**k.’ And I said, ‘Well, where are the notes?’ And she said, ‘Those are the notes.’ Because it kind of goes nuts in a good way, right?”

Avatar’s Filming Process is Based on The Lord of the Rings Movies

     20th Century Studios

The reason it took so long for Avatar: The Way of Water was that James Cameron decided to write four sequels in their entirety before filming the first sequel. He compares this process to Peter Jackson’s filming of The Lord of the Rings trilogy:

Essentially, Cameron had to write the ‘books’ for further Avatar sequels before a single frame was shot. Then, the actors had to read their scripts and get an understanding of their entire character arcs. Finally, filming could begin, but Cameron wanted to shoot the entirety of The Way of Water, Avatar 3, and even part of Avatar 4 first before releasing the first sequel in theaters.

“My model was what Peter Jackson did with The Lord of the Rings, which was a crazy bet in its time. And really hats off to that, that they took that chance to launch on all three of those films. But he had the books mapped out, so he could always show the actors what they needed to know about their character arc. So I felt I had to do the same thing. I had to play this as if the books already existed. So the only way for us to do that was to write all the scripts and let the actors read all the scripts and see where their characters were going and what it all meant. Not that that’s actable in the moment, but I think it’s something that the actors could work into their preparation for their characters.”

He points out that this process is similar to Peter Jackson’s filming of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Production for the trilogy began in 1997, and all three films were shot simultaneously in just over a year, well before The Fellowship of the Ring landed in theaters. But, of course, Peter Jackson’s trilogy had the books to go off of, while James Cameron had to write his own, which took up a significant chunk of the 13-year wait for The Way of Water. Cameron explains this was necessary to keep all the actors ‘motivated’ throughout filming:

Avatar: The Way of Water will have to be a massive box office hit to break even, but early screenings of the movie have already been met with enthusiastic reviews.

“So they knew, ‘Okay, we’re going to come in and film this in bite-size chunks, not necessarily in sequence. We’re going to be shooting parts of 2, parts of 3, parts of 4 on any given day.’ That’s a challenge… but I felt that it was the right way to approach it with the actors. And also to let them see where it’s all going, so they’re properly motivated and enthused. Because the story’s a corker. By the time we get down to 4 and 5, if we’re so lucky, knock wood, to get that far, which is obviously driven by market forces, we have to be successful.”

Avatar: The Way of Water releases exclusively in theaters later this month, on Dec. 16. Director and producer James Cameron co-wrote the screenplay with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. 20th Century Studios will handle the distribution of the film. The cast includes Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, and Stephen Lang.