James Cameron has been discussing how work has progressed on the forthcoming Avatar sequels, with the director explaining how hiring four different writers to pen the respective scripts has resulted in a more collaborative process.
Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and Shane Salerno have been hired to work on the second, third and fourth films respectively, with Cameron basing this collaborative approach on his experiences with TV writing.
"We tried an experiment," explains Cameron. "We set ourselves a challenge of writing three films at the same time. I knew I could certainly write any one of them but to write three in some reasonable amount of time… I knew I would have to work with other writers."
"The best experience I had working with other writers was in television when I did Dark Angel . So we put together a team, three teams actually - one for each script."
"We sat in a writing room for five months, eight-hours-a-day, and we worked out every beat of the story across all three films so it all connects as one three film saga."
"I didn’t tell them which sequel was going to be theirs to write until the very last day, so everybody was equally invested story-wise in all three films. We all consider that to be a really exciting, creative and groundbreaking experiment in screenwriting."
We'll find out just how well it turned out when Avatar 2 opens in the UK in December 2016.
