Avatar: Watch! James Cameron Offers Update of Avatar 2 and 3 in Interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger

We’re getting closer! Kind of. James Cameron gave updates of  Avatar 2 and 3 during a video chat with former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who starred in Cameron’s “The Terminator,” as part of the 2020 Austrian World Summit.

“COVID hit us like it hit everybody,” Cameron said. “We lost about four and a half months of production. As a result of that, we’ve rolled around one more full year for a release in December of 2022. That’s been announced already.”

“Now that doesn’t mean I have an extra year to finish the film because the day we deliver ‘Avatar 2,’ we’ll just start working on finishing ‘Avatar 3,’” Cameron said. “So where we are right now, I’m down in New Zealand shooting, we’re shooting the remainder of the live-action. We’ve got about 10% left to go. We’re 100% complete on ‘Avatar 2’ and we’re sort of 95% complete with ‘Avatar 3.’”

The second “Avatar” installment, which was originally aiming to open in 2014, will debut 13 years after the original “Avatar.”

“We’re very lucky in that we chose this as our production site years ago,” he told Schwarzenegger. “We made the first film here in New Zealand and it turns out to be ranking first or second-best country in the world for its COVID response.”

Cameron gave no details to Schwarzenegger on the plot for the sequels. “I can’t tell you anything about the story. I believe in the mystery and the great reveal.”

“From 2013 until now we’ve mostly designed the whole world across four new movies,” James Cameron told Variety in a recent interview. “We’ve written, finished scripts for all four of those films. We’ve cast them, and we’ve [performance] captured movie 2, movie 3, and the first part of movie 4. We’re mostly done with the live action. I’ve got a couple months in New Zealand in spring, so we’re kind of on track with what we set out to do.”

“People don’t really understand the scope and complexity of the process,” he continued. “It’s like making two and a half big animated films. A typical big animated film takes about four years, so, if you do the math on that, we’re kind of right on schedule for December 2021.”

Recently, the official Twitter for Avatar shared an image marking the completion of principal photography.

The post said:
“That’s a wrap, Na’vi Nation! It’s our last day of live-action filming in 2019, and we’re celebrating with a sneak peek. Check out this photo of the aft well deck section of the Sea Dragon, a massive mothership that carries an array of other sea-going craft in the sequels.”

The film will be the first of four sequels. Avatar 2 is scheduled for release on Dec. 18, 2021, after previous postponed release dates. Cast members Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, and Sigourney Weaver, among others, will be returning, with Kate Winslet and Vin Diesel.

In October, the account shared another image showing director, James Cameron, some sort of water sequence. This seems to be the common theme of the two films, which leads us to speculate that water may be a major theme of Avitar 2.

Are you excited about the return of Avatar to the screens? What are you hoping to see in a sequel or has it been so long you can’t remember?

Let us know in the comments below.

That’s a wrap, Na’vi Nation! 💙

It’s our last day of live-action filming in 2019, and we’re celebrating with a sneak peek. 👀

Check out this photo of the aft well deck section of the Sea Dragon, a massive mothership that carries an array of other sea-going craft in the sequels. pic.twitter.com/AXgAve6aTG

— Avatar (@officialavatar) November 29, 2019

Wave machines, blazing fire, and @JimCameron wielding a 3D camera — just another day on the set of the Avatar sequels!

Thanks to producer @JonLandau for capturing the photo. Be sure to follow him for future sneak peeks. 👀 pic.twitter.com/MxuPlOIQ3e

— Avatar (@officialavatar) October 2, 2019