James Cameron reveals that Avatar 3 and 4 might not happen

it all comes down to the box office figures

(20th Century Fox)

James Cameron has revealed that two of his Avatar sequels might not even happen.

Upon the director's announcement that he was to direct four sequels to his box-office smash back in 2016, many questioned whether audiences needed or indeed wanted four new films to be released an entire decade after the first one - a fact that Cameron himself has now addressed.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Cameron admitted that if Avatar 2 and 3 don't perform well at the box office, plans to release the fourth and fifth instalments could easily change.

“Let’s face it, if Avatar 2 and 3 don’t make enough money, there’s not going to be a 4 and 5,” he said.

“They’re fully encapsulated stories in and of themselves. It builds across the five films to a greater kind of meta narrative, but they’re fully formed films in their own right, unlike, say, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, where you really just had to sort of go, ‘Oh, s**t, all right, well I guess I better come back next year.’ Even though that all worked and everybody did.”

It's unclear how Cameron plans to get around this where production's concerned considering he's “shooting across all [scripts] simultaneously.”

Cameron recently revealed why it's taken him so long to begin shooting the sequels blaming underwater motion-capture technology - something he claims has “never been done before.”

He said: “Basically, whenever you add water to any problem, it just gets ten times harder. So, we’ve thrown a lot of horsepower, innovation, imagination and new technology at the problem, and it’s taken us about a year and a half now to work out how we’re going to do it.”

Cameron confirmed that the majority of underwater scenes will take place in Avatar 2 and 3. Release dates for the sequels have been set for 18 December 2020,17 December 2021, 20 December 2024, and 19 December 2025.

It was recently announced that Kate Winslet had joined the cast alongside Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang.

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