James Cameron wants to change things up for Avatar 4 and 5 to make them cheaper and easier to make, but fans are worried about what cost-cutting measures could look like.
"You know, I’ll be doing some writing. I’ve got a number of projects that I’m cooking," Cameron told the Empire Film Podcast. "And Avatar 4 and 5 are still floating out there. We’re going to be looking at some new technologies to try to do them more efficiently. Because they’re hideously expensive and take a long time. I want to do them in half the time for two-thirds of the cost. That’s my metric. And so it’s going to take us a year or so to figure out how to do that."
Some fans are worried that this technology could be generative AI, however. "It better not be what I think it is," wrote one Twitter user. "Such an obvious AI soft-launch," said another.
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At one point, Cameron said he was prepared to walk away from the franchise if the third installment, Avatar: Fire and Ash, failed to perform at the box office. Luckily, that wasn't the case, and the threequel made over a billion dollars (which made Cameron the first director in history to make four billion-dollar hits in a row). Still, only a third of Avatar 4 has been shot so far, and there's still a lot of work to be done on the fifth movie. Most recently, Cameron said that the fourquel was "very likely."
"I hope we get to do it, because they're two incredible stories that fulfill everything Jim wanted to say for our benefit as Earthlings, as humans," Sigourney Weaver, who plays adopted Na'vi Kiri, told GamesRadar+ while promoting The Mandalorian and Grogu. "But, whatever they want to do is fine."
Avatar 4 is set to hit theaters on December 21, 2029, with Avatar 5 following on December 19, 2031. In the meantime, check out the best upcoming movies on the way this year.
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