Se alkuperäinen Avatar vuodelta 2009 pyörii tällä hetkellä elokuvateattereissa muutaman viikon ajan, ja tarkoituksena on toki hypettää joulukuussa ensi-iltansa saavaa jatko-osaa The Way With Water.
Varietylle puhunut ohjaaja James Cameron kertoi, että hän työsti jatko-osan käsikirjoitusta vuoden, mutta hylkäsi sen jälkeen koko roskan.
"All films work on different levels. The first is surface, which is character, problem and resolution. The second is thematic. What is the movie trying to say? But 'Avatar' also works on a third level, the subconscious. I wrote an entire script for the sequel, read it and realized that it did not get to level three. Boom. Start over. That took a year."
Cameron uhkasi antaa potkut käsikirjoittajille, jotka halusivat heti siirtyä pohtimaan uusia tarinoita sen sijaan, että olisivat ensin selvittäneet sen alkuperäisen rainan menestyksen syyn.
"When I sat down to write the sequels, I knew there were going to be three at the time and eventually it turned into four, I put together a group of writers and said, 'I don't want to hear anybody's new ideas or anyone's pitches until we have spent some time figuring out what worked on the first film, what connected, and why it worked. They kept wanting to talk about the new stories. I said, 'We aren't doing that yet.' Eventually I had to threaten to fire them all because they were doing what writers do, which is to try and create new stories. I said, 'We need to understand what the connection was and protect it, protect that ember and that flame.'"
