• Will we be returning to Pandora?

The simple answer to that is yes, but not as soon as you might think.

James Cameron has just announced the planned dates for the future releases of his Avatar sequels (4 more to come – yes, I know…). So they will arrive as follows:

– Avatar 2 – 18 December 2020

– Avatar 3 – 17 December 2021

– Avatar 4 – 20 December 2024

– Avatar 5 – 19 December 2025

Insisting that the films will be “Bitchin'”, it’s hard not to just assume he’s being a bit arrogant. Yet if his catalogue of films shows us anything, it’s that he knows how to make good films and, more importantly in the producers’ eyes and more impressively, make them successful; make them big and make money. He famously did it with Titanic and then more so with the first Avatar, and it looks like he’s pretty confident he might make that again… but will he keep setting records for the next 4 films in a franchise most people don’t care about?

Despite the undeniably enormous success of 2009’s Avatar, excitement for the film has waned, largely since we haven’t seen any more of Pandora since and the technological breakthroughs it displayed then we’ve seen several times since in other films. So it seems mad that Cameron wants to dive in and commit to a further 4 films, without knowing if audience worldwide will take to the franchise again. This shows either arrogance or confidence – I sincerely hope it’s the latter since, if done well, this has the potential to be a sci-fi fantasy to rival some of the best.

Or could they? It’s certainly interesting to note that Avatar 2 will hit screens almost exactly a year after Star Wars Episode IX will, the end of their current trilogy – is he trying to avoid competition, sure that he won’t win? Only time can tell…