Avatar: The Way Of Water proved itself to be a splash hit. Premiering nearly a decade after the original, the highly-anticipated sequel has grossed over $1 billion at the box office. Audiences clearly can’t get enough of the blue aliens, so the franchise won't slow down anytime soon. The film's director, James Cameron, already has major plans in store for Avatar 3.
Cameron recently appeared on Edith Bowman’s podcast, Soundtracking, where he revealed his creative process for the next Avatar. “I’m going to take a moment when the dust clears to kind of assess what people loved and what they responded to the most in this current release, and I may go back and tinker a little bit, and we may go back and do a couple of moments here and there,” he said. “It won’t be radical, but maybe fine-tune it a bit to emphasize that which people are responding to.” For example, Cameron added that audiences loved the character Lo’ak, so he plans on giving him a larger role in the next film. “Lo’ak really emerged as a character that people went with,” he explained. “So I might find ways to sort of—now, he’s already the narrator—oh, I’m giving something away here. But it’s OK,” he said. “I think it could be intriguing for people to think about what’s coming.”
Now that we've met the sea clan of Pandora—who appropriately have teal-toned skin to reflect the aquamarine glitter of their beloved sea—we're all left to wonder a few questions. Where are the desert Na'vi? Or the swamp Na'vi? Or the fire Na'vi of Pandora?! (Actually—more on that later.) There's an entire planet left to explore, people. With three more sequels set to be directed by Cameron, we are closer than ever to getting a full tour of the mysterious, bioluminescent world. So let's talk Avatar 3. (And 4, and 5, and also, 6!)
A report from BBC News claims that the next three Avatar films will be named, Avatar: The Seed Bearer, Avatar: The Tulkun Rider and Avatar: The Quest for Eywa. And what will the plot of The Seed Bearer be, exactly? Well, lucky for us Avatar fans hungry for more sequel details, Cameron loves to drop breadcrumbs in every interview. In a recent conversation with French newspaper 20 Minutes, Cameron revealed that we would indeed get a chance to meet the other inhabitants of Pandora in the next installment. We'll be introduced to the fire tribe of the Na'vi people—and it seems like in typical bad-guy movie trope fashion, they might not be so friendly.
"The fire will be represented by the ‘Ash People,’" Cameron said to 20 Minutes. "I want to show the Na’vi from another angle because, so far, I have only shown their good sides. In the early films, there are very negative human examples and very positive Na’vi examples. In Avatar 3, we will do the opposite. We will also explore new worlds, while continuing the story of the main characters. I can say that the last parts will be the best. The others were an introduction, a way to set the table before serving the meal.” It definitely felt like The Way of Water was setting us up for a bigger showdown with even bigger stakes—so consider us ready.
Something else we do know for sure about the The Seed Bearer is that it won't contain much gun violence. As Cameron recently revealed to Esquire Middle East, “I actually cut about 10 minutes of the movie targeting gunplay action. I wanted to get rid of some of the ugliness, to find a balance between light and dark,” said Cameron. Looks like instead of excessive gunfire exchange, we'll have a lot of creative CGI filmmaking and gorgeous shots of the surface of Pandora to look forward to in The Seed Bearer. Luckily, we'll only need to wait until 2024 to see it. (We hope.)
