'Avatar 2' updates: Movie execs not worried about delays, trust James Cameron's vision for the movie

(Reuters)

"Avatar," released back in 2009, achieved a rare feat in modern cinema nowadays. The film was met with commercial and critical success, becoming the highest grossing movie of all time.

Most studios executives would be quick to capitalize on this kind of success and rush to churn out more movies in the series.

20th Century Fox, however, has decided to trust James Cameron's vision and process; and patiently wait for the sequel to be completed.

"James Cameron has his own pace," 20th Century Fox CEO Jim Gianopulos said earlier this year. "It's a room... which is covered floor to ceiling with images, characters, worlds, settings. It's the most amazing, breathtaking thing you've ever seen. His challenge is to put all of that in a movie," Gianopulos added.

Gianopulos was also able to confirm that "Avatar 2" will be released by Christmas 2017.

The sequel was initially slated for a late 2016 release, however, due to difficulties in the writing process, the sequel has been delayed.

"There's a layer of complexity getting into the story to work as a saga across three films that you don't get when you're making a stand-alone film," Cameron said.

Cameron had decided to write, produce and film Avatar 2, 3 and 4 simultaneously.

"We've done that so that everything tracks throughout the three films. We're not just going to do one and then make up another one and another one after that," he explained. It is Cameron's vision that the three films link cohesively to ensure that the audiences are not left hanging.

The filmmaker is also again trying to push the boundaries of modern cinema by using the most advanced technologies.

The upcoming film saga will reportedly create rich new worlds and cultures by using ultra-high definition frame rates. Cameron was also said to be developing technology to allow performance capture of sequences to be filmed underwater.

Despite all the innovative new features, the movies will stay true to the central conflict of man versus nature. "The primary conflict between the human view of kind of dominating nature, and the Navi view of integrating into nature stays the same, but manifest itself in different ways," the director said.

Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana are set to reprise their roles as Sully and Neytiri in the upcoming sequels.

Despite meeting unfavorable odds in the first movie, Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Grace Augustine and Stephen Lang's Colonel Miles Quaritch will also be back.

"Avatar 2" will be released by Christmas 2017. "Avatar 3" is set to be released in 2018 and "Avatar 4" sometime in 2019.

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