3 More Avatar Sequels Are On The Way

1CK1S · June 2014

James Cameron has plans for “Avatar” on many media

Like the deep-sea craft James Cameron used to dive nearly seven miles down in the Pacific, the long-awaited screenplays for his three sequels to “Avatar” will soon pop to the surface, probably within weeks.

Mr. Cameron, an avid adventurer as well as one of Hollywood’s most successful directors, has been working for much of the last several years on the “Avatar” films, when he was not indulging his other passion and exploring the deepest parts of the ocean.

For those who share Mr. Cameron’s moviemaking adventures — particularly executives at 20th Century Fox, which released “Avatar” to about $2.8 billion in worldwide ticket sales almost five years ago — delivery of finished scripts will signal the beginning of perhaps their grandest enterprise.

Fox, as well as Mr. Cameron and his cohorts at Lightstorm Entertainment, his production company, are expecting the three successive “Avatar” films — set for release in three straight Decembers beginning in 2016 — to transform their companies and possibly once again to set a new standard for large-scale, multimedia entertainment

An “Avatar”-themed area is scheduled for 2017 in Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando,

Billions of dollars are riding on the effort. The effects-heavy sequels will be expensive: Mr. Cameron has vaguely said their combined production cost would be less than $1 billion, though the movies cannot be budgeted until they are written.

But in Mr. Cameron, the project is being led by a director who helped to redefine his industry with “The Terminator,” “Titanic” and the immersive 3-D science fiction spectacle “Avatar.”

“Jim first and foremost in life is an explorer, and it’s what he does in his movies,” said Jon Landau, Mr. Cameron’s business partner. Speaking by telephone recently, Mr. Landau described what he said had been a yearslong effort to conceptualize an entire “Avatar” universe that would be realized over 20 years or more in various media, some of which have yet to be invented.

“We decided to build out the breadth of our world — whether or not it’s in one of the films — now,” he said.

“This is not about any one medium,” Mr. Landau added, referring to the elaborate ideas being developed by Mr. Cameron, along with a team of four screenwriters, and by a novelist, Steven Gould.

Mr. Gould, known especially for the science fiction book “Jumper,” is weaving those ideas into novels that are meant to read as if they had inspired, rather than were spun off from, “Avatar.”

Fox has waited, optimistically, through Mr. Cameron’s painstaking deliberations, but at some cost.

The “Avatar” hiatus has led to some shrinkage at Fox, which last year fell to sixth among the major studios in market share. In 2013, it had about $1.1 billion in domestic ticket sales, compared with nearly $1.5 billion in 2010, when “Avatar” was working its way toward becoming the best-selling movie in history (without adjusting for inflation, which would put “Gone With the Wind” on top).

For the quarter that ended March 31, the studio contributed $354 million in operating income to its parent, 21st Century Fox. The performance was solid, and it will be bolstered this year by “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” the surprise hit “The Fault in Our Stars” and the next film in the revived “Planet of the Apes” series. But it accounted for less than 20 percent of the total $1.8 billion in operating income at a company that is dominated by its cable network operations.

“When I talk to the company, it really matters,” Michael Nathanson, an analyst with MoffettNathanson, said of the sequels. “This could be more meaningful for the company than just the first ‘Avatar’ was.”

While Warner exploited its enormous series of “Harry Potter” and “Hobbit” films, Fox played out its decades-old “Star Wars” franchise, which went to Disney with its purchase of Lucasfilm. It also made hay with its somewhat more modest “X-Men” films and rebuilt “Planet of the Apes,” a series born in 1968.

But the new “Avatar” films have open-ended storytelling potential — as purely original inventions, they are not limited by existing books or the aging of a young star. And they are coupled with Mr. Cameron’s insistence on an ever more realistic audience experience. In the view of Jim Gianopulos, 20th Century Fox’s chief executive, that makes them worth the wait.

“After all these years together, you just say, ‘O.K., Jim’s ready to make a movie. Let’s strap in and go for the ride,’ ” said Mr. Gianopulos by telephone recently.

In making the sequels, he said, Fox will have a financial partner, the Seelig Group. But the studio will invest enough of its own money to own a larger share than the portion — somewhat above 40 percent — that it held of the original “Avatar,” which was similarly split with outside financiers

The long process of exploiting the new films, Mr. Gianopulos added, would only begin with their expected success in theaters. “We’re going to have merry Christmases for the next few years,” he predicted.

As the films roll out, Mr. Gianopulos said, Fox expects that a growing string of ancillary businesses will be helped along by an unusually robust online operation that is being built.