‘Avatar’ Sequels: Plans to be Shot - All Four Sequels Concurrently

Last week at CinemaCon, James Cameron and 20th Century Fox announced they were planning four Avatar sequels. The release schedule currently has Avatar 2 due Christmas 2018, Avatar 3 is due Christmas 2020, Avatar 4 is due Christmas 2022, and Avatar 5 is due Christmas 2023. There weren’t any details beyond that, but now Cameron has done an interview with Famous Monsters of Filmland to talk about the upcoming quadrilogy of sequels and what he has planned.
For starters, he isn’t planning to shoot them back-to-back. Instead, he’s taking a miniseries approach and shooting them concurrently, which seems fairly bold when the first sequel is only two years away and the final sequel is due in seven years. Cameron explains:

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“It’s not back-to-back. It’s really all one big production. It’s more the way you would shoot a miniseries. So we’ll be shooting across all [AVATAR scripts] simultaneously. So Monday I might be doing a scene from Movie Four, and Tuesday I’m doing a scene from Movie One. … We’re working across, essentially, eight hours of story. It’s going to be a big challenge to keep it all fixed in our minds, exactly where we are, across that story arc at any given point. It’s going to be probably the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. I’m sure the actors will be challenged by that as well. It’s like, ‘No, no, no, no, this person hasn’t died yet, so you’re still in this phase of your life.’ It’s a saga. It’s like doing all three GODFATHER films at the same time.”