Avatar Producer Talks Sequel and Cameron’s Upcoming Projects

Avatar 2, Battle Angel (see above) and The Dive - three movie titles that have one thing in common: they’re all on the slate of upcoming projects for director James Cameron. Recently, Avatar producer (and longtime Cameron collaborator) Jon Landau (Titanic) sat down with French magazine Le Film to talk about the acclaimed director’s Avatar project, and (more importantly) the rumored projects Cameron will be working on down the line.

Special thanks to the guys over at Slash Film, who have done the legwork of translating of the quotes that Landau gave to Le Film. I guess the best place to start would be with the possibility of an Avatar sequel:

Said Landau:

If the public likes Avatar, it’s a possibility. After all, here we are exploring the surface of the planet Pandora. The interior remains to be seen.

That statement is pretty intriguing: we know that Cameron has had a lot of the vision for Avatar bouncing around his head for about a decade and a half, so it seems pretty likely that he would’ve conceived a much more expansive vision of the Na’vi (Avatar’s resident aliens) and their home planet, Pandora, than one movie could contain.

So what might be hiding beneath the surface of Pandora? Dude, I haven’t even seen Avatar yet (just a preview)! Can’t run before I walk! Yeeesh…

Of course all this Avatar 2 talk is a bit premature, as the film has to first live up to its hype (and swollen budget) and fill those theater seats (repeatedly) this December, before any studio is going to back a sequel. So let’s just pump the breaks for now and put Avatar 2 on the back burner where it belongs.

‘BATTLE ANGEL’ AND ‘THE DIVE’

Can you imagine a live action Battle Angel? (click image for source)

Somehow we’ve yet to cover Cameron’s adaptation of the popular manga/anime Battle Angel Alita here at Screen Rant (hey, it’s not like we cover sci-fi/comic book movie news….oh, wait…).

However, that may all change now that Landau has let it be known that Battle Angel is still very much in the works. The manga/anime focused on a young teenage cyborg girl who was built to basically be a cyborg-killer; a whole lot of ass-kicking ensued thereafter. Battle Angel still remains one my favorite anime flicks, up there with Ninja Scroll and Akira. Glad to hear Cameron is pushing forward with the project.

If you’ve never seen the anime, have a look at it here.

Along with the Battle Angel update, we learn from Landau that Cameron has yet another underwater movie in the works, entitled The Dive. Check out the quote from Landau:

We’ll go on to Battle Angel Alita and The Dive, a love story in the middle of a dive. James is directing both projects.

Is it me, or does James Cameron have some kind of strange water fixation? We all know his classic underwater sci-fi flick The Abyss, of course there’s Titanic and earlier this month we reported on another underwater flick Cameron is producing, entitled Sanctum. Guess some people are just fish at heart…

Gotta be honest, though: The Dive doesn’t sound the least bit interesting to me – at least not the way Landau pitches it. However, it is James Cameron, so who knows what the movie will be in the end.

What do you think about all this talk of James Cameron’s upcoming projects? Do you think Avatar will do well enough financially to warrant a sequel? And if you had to choose which film would be made first, would you go with Battle Angel or The Dive?

Avatar will be in theaters on December 18, 2009. No word on release dates yet for the other projects.

Sources: Le Film & Slash Film

Header Image Source: Market Saw