This week saw a lot of Hollywoods movie studios shuffle and rearrange their release shedules, mainly for the year of 2017. We got the news that Paramount Pictures had removed their planned sequel to Terminator Genisys, effectively eliminating any chance of the studio distributing another Terminator movie before the production rights revert back to creator James Cameron in 2019.
We also recieved the unsurprising news that Disney and Lucasfilms' Star Wars Episode VIII will now be released December 15th 2017, in the hope to re-enact the massively successful performance of The Force Awakens. This coincides with news from last month in which Cameron stated in an interview with the Montreal Gazette that he was looking to release the long awaited Avatar 2 next Christmas...
Fans were hoping to see the First Order try their luck against Pandora's finest!
“Christmas of ’17 is the target. At least, that’s what we’ve announced. But I don’t consider that to be as important as the fact that when we get all three films done, we drop them a year apart. I call it a meta-narrative that runs across the three movies. Each film stands alone, but it also tells one much larger story. We have design more or less finished, which is an enormous task. It’s been about a two-year task. (We’ve finished) all the creatures and the landscapes, and the new worlds within the world of Pandora that you see. The writing is ongoing, but almost finished. Technical development is done. Stages are done. Infrastructure. So we’re really poised to start after the first of the year.”
Yet a month after making this statement, and after hearing that Star Wars Episode VIII will release in the same month the Canadian director has seemingly changed his mind entirely, with "sources" reporting to The Wrap that 20th Century Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment will NOT be ready to release Avatar 2 by Christmas 2017, and that a new release date has not yet been determined.
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Avatar still, at the moment of going to press, remains the most successful movie in worldwide box office takings. I can see why. While essentially being "Fern Gully with Blue Thundercats" the movies visual effects, pace, action set pieces, characterisation and direction are second to none. James Cameron does recieve a lot of negativity from fans for "over-insecticizing" the Alien, or abandoning the Terminator, or for Titanic, or for Avatar. While I will praise his movie making ability, which is evident in his body of work I will say this...
James Cameron has planned an entire series of Avatar movies, that he is developing at a leisurely pace (some would say a Kubrick-ean pace), and that he intends to release them when he feels they are ready. While Avatar is the most successful movie in worldwdie box offices, it is only so because the movie had a nine month theatrical run, a somewhat unfair advantage, some would say. If Avatars box office takings record was only that of a standard theatrical run it likely would not stand on so high a pedestal. Which brings me to the whole point of this addition to the article.
Sorry guys, it had to be said!
While I enjoyed Avatar as a, somewhat preachy, science fiction action movie, of which Cameron does well, do I really want three more sequels rammed down my throat because the director has the sizeable fortune to make whatever movies he wants. Would I rather Cameron finish the Terminator franchise, or write and direct a Predator movie, or take back the planned Battle Angel: Alita that he gave to Robert Rodriguez.
Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park - Your (scientists) where so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should!
