While studios and fans are still dealing with movie theaters around the world being closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak...
- Companies Speak Up As K-Pop Concerts Are Categorized As 'Gatherings' During Pandemic Instead Of 'Performances'
- 9 K-pop Groups With Online Concert That Has The Most Viewers In 2020-2021 So Far
- Song Joong Ki To Come To Colombia To Resume Filming 'Bogota' Around July - August
While studios and fans are still dealing with movie theaters around the world being closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, James Cameron is still confident Avatar 2 can hit its intended date.
The 65-year-old filmmaker has been shooting both Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 for the past few years, with Avatar 2 currently slated for a December 17, 2021 release. While Cameron admits the COVID-19 shutdown has 'put a major crimp in our stride,' the director admitted to Empire that he still thinks the sequel will arrive on time.
'I want to get back to work on Avatar 2, which right now we're not allowed to do under state emergency laws or rules. So it's all on hold right now,' Cameron said from his home in Malibu.
The filmmaker added that, just before everyone went into quarantine, he was getting set to, 'shoot down in New Zealand, so that got pushed. We're trying to get back to it as quick as we can.'
Although the filmmaker is not quite working the way he had hoped to on the sequel, he hopes that New Zealand's aggressive response to the virus could mean there will be no release date delays.
'On the bright side, New Zealand seems to have been very effective in controlling the virus and their goal is not mitigation, but eradication, which they believe that they can do with aggressive contact tracing and testing,' the director said.
'So there's a very good chance that our shoot might be delayed a couple of months, but we can still do it. So that's good news,' the filmmaker added.
While plans for principal photography have been pushed back, digital work is still being done by visual effects artists working from home.
'We've got everybody – everybody at Weta Digital and Lightstorm – working from home to the extent that that is possible,' the filmmaker added.
'But my work is on the stage doing the virtual cameras and so on, so I can do a bit of editing, but it's not great for me,' Cameron admitted.
Avatar 2 is said to take place 12 years after the events of the first movie, following Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) as he continues to roam the planet of Pandora with the new family he has with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana).
Avatar became the highest-grossing movie of all time when it was released in 2009, with a domestic box office tally of $760.5 million and a worldwide gross of $2.790 billion.
Its domestic box office record was broken in 2015 by Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which took in $936.6 million, though it fell short worldwide with $2.068 billion.
The worldwide record was broken last year by Avengers: Endgame, which earned $2.797 billion worldwide, $858.3 million of which coming domestically.
