Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington have signed a new deal with LightStorm Entertainment and Twentieth Century Fox to star in three James Cameron Avatar sequels, an inevitable signing considering the importance of their characters’ respective roles.
Worthington will reprise the part of Jake Sully, a former Marine who ditched his broken wheelchair-bound body at the conclusion of Avatar to permanently inhabit a Na’vi “Avatar,” or life-life replica of a native Na’vi body. Likewise, Saldana will play Neytiri, the native Na’vi love interest of Jake Sully who helped him assimilate into the Na’vi culture and ultimately turn against mankind in the original film.
Writer and director James Cameron had originally planned for Avatar to be a trilogy after the booming success of the first film. As he developed the continuing story of the Na’vi, two sequels grew into three and a new deal had to be cut for Saldana and Worthington to cover all three new films.
Little is known about where Avatar 2 through Avatar 4 will take the story, but Cameron has been vocal about wanting to explore underneath the seas of Pandora where the first film was set. Cameron could also choose to take the adventure to other worlds as he has a blank creative slate from which to work.
Last year Fox announced that Cameron would be sharing scripting duties for each Avatar sequel with a different creative team. Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds) is on Avatar 2, Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) are working on Avatar 3, while Shane Salerno Salinger will bring the four-film saga to a potential close with Avatar 4.
Cameron will shoot all three Avatar sequels back-to-back, mirroring the cost-effective strategy employed by Peter Jackson on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. Fox will release Avatar 2, which is not the final title for the first sequel, in December 2016, while the other two sequels will land at one-year intervals in December 2017 and 2018.
