James Cameron is one of the rare directors who has had a near-perfect track record of blockbusters in Hollywood. He has only gotten better concerning his reputation of being a major box office winner and his technical mastery over CGI and mixing it with practical effects remain unparalleled. With blockbusters like Titanic, the first two Terminator films, and now the Two Avatar films, he is the reigning champion of the box-office race in Hollywood. His name is synonymous with success and technical brilliance.
Cameron’s most successful ventures are the two Avatar films which have both grossed past the $2 billion mark at the box office. The two films are placed at the first and third place in the list of the highest-grossing films in Hollywood history. But one will be surprised to know that the first Avatar was kept as a backup plan and Cameron was instead trying to make another film.
James Cameron Wanted to Make Alita: Battle Angel Before Avatar
James Cameron had the idea of an Avatar film in 1995 when technology and CGI were not at the level of what it is now. His vision and grand story ideas for the film did not fit with the level of technological advancements of the time. Hence he kept the script on the backburner. He talked about how Avatar came back to him 10 years later (with GQ),
“I wrote Avatar which was a kitchen sink approach. It wasn’t a smart approach. I just threw everything into it that I thought would be cool. And so we sat and had technical meetings. I talked about how I wanna do facial performance capture, I wanna do it with a camera. But they said ‘We can’t get there from here. We have to do other projects first and build the toolset and work our way up to it. That was in ’95.
I was hitting a wall, I wanted to make Battle Angel. I was three scripts in and I still wasn’t liking it. So I thought ‘I better have a backup plan here’. So I got out Avatar and I read it and I went ‘Oh, this is pretty good, this is actually not a bad story. So we put Battle Angel and Avatar on a parallel track to develop the facial capture tools and we thought maybe we flip a coin. We’ll do one first and then the other”
Cameron chose to do Avatar first without much proper thought just to check their new performance capture tools. But as they continued with the testing, he and other makers of the film decided that this should go first and be the one they should be concentrating on. The film was released in 2009 and became a milestone due to its mind-blowing visuals and the technical evolution over the use of CGI and other effects. Cameron later produced Alita: Battle Angel which was directed by Robert Rodriguez in 2019.
The Future of The Avatar Franchise Looks Very Promising
Avatar: The Way of Water continued James Cameron’s humungous success with the franchise with the film grossing $2.3 billion at the box office. The director talked about the future of the franchise and other details regarding the various stages of production of each upcoming sequel (via Entertainment Weekly)
“I’m sure that we’ll have a discussion soon with the top folks at Disney about the game plan going forward for Avatar 3, which is already in the can,” he continues. “We’ve already captured and photographed the whole film. And then Avatar 4 and 5 are both written. We even have some of 4 in the can. So, I think we can see that, I think, we’ve begun a franchise at this point.”
Cameron is hard at work developing the sequels including Avatar 3, Avatar 4, and Avatar 5, all scheduled to release in 2025, 2029, and 2031 respectively. The first two Avatar films are available to stream on Disney+.
Sources: GQ, Entertainment Weekly
