James Cameron reveals more details about his scrapped Avatar 2 script and how it was repurposed. The Canadian filmmaker is the three-time Academy Award-winning talent behind hits like The Terminator, Aliens, and Titanic, whose directorial effects have come sparsely over the years, but usually to immense success. In 2009, Cameron wrote and directed Avatar, a wholly original film about the lush planet of Pandora inhabited by the native Na'vi tribe, whose homeworld is threatened by human colonizers looking to mine the valuable mineral known as unobtanium.
Largely due to its groundbreaking visual effects, Avatar went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time, a title it still holds today after numerous re-releases. Due to this incredible success, Cameron began developing numerous sequels, the first of which, Avatar: The Way of Water, is due out next month. The more than ten-year gap between installments is attributed to Cameron and his team having to again develop new performance capture technology before filming. Cameron also scrapped an Avatar 2 script he spent an entire year writing, instead starting the screenplay that would become The Way of Water.
During a recent interview with Total Film (via Games Radar), Cameron revealed some more details about his scrapped Avatar 2 script, which was titled Avatar: The High Ground. Cameron and his team of writers, which includes Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman, and Shane Salerno, actually finished the 130-page script, but decided to scrap it since it wasn't quite good enough. However, its ideas were repurposed into the Avatar sequels and a series of graphic novels. Read what Cameron said below:
We figured out a way to restructure the elements that we needed to distribute across the first two of the sequels, and relaunched it in a completely different way. There’s some great stuff in it. I mean, you’ve got the Na’vi fighting with bows and arrows in zero-G. I mean, I’m there! I want to see that movie. But it just didn’t achieve enough of the overall story and thematic goals that I had in mind. So we’re turning it into a Dark Horse graphic novel. You’ll be able to see that interim battle that took place between movie one and movie two.
How To Read The Scrapped Avatar: The High Ground Story
While the Avatar: The High Ground script was scrapped, its ideas haven't been totally forgotten. As Cameron discusses above, some of its best ideas and elements were repurposed into Avatar: The Way of Water. Its story was also reworked into a Dark Horse graphic novel series. Titled Avatar: The High Ground after Cameron's original Avatar 2 script, the graphic novel series follows a battle that takes place between the first two films when the humans return to Pandora with an armada of heavily-armed starships, and Jake and Neytiri must fight not only to defend their Na'Vi family, but their home planet itself.
With the first of three issues releasing on December 6, the graphic novel will act as a direct prequel to Avatar: The Way of Water and bridge the ten-year gap between the first two films before the sequel releases in theaters on December 17. Some of Avatar: The High Ground's ideas were also repurposed into Avatar 3, which could possibly be titled Avatar: The Seed Bearer and has reportedly finished filming ahead of its scheduled release date on December 20, 2024. The scrapped Avatar 2 script is clearly paying dividends for Cameron and his team of writers as its ideas were not only reworked into multiple Avatar sequels, but also expanded the franchise in the form of a graphic novel.
Source: Total Film (via Games Radar)
