The lush new Avatar: Fire and Ash trailer just dropped today—the movie’s in theaters December 19—but James Cameron is already thinking about what’s next for Pandora. Not just Avatar 4 and beyond; though the films are famously on the cutting edge of motion-capture technology, Cameron would like to dig deeper into their world using a more traditional form of animation.
Speaking to Empire Magazine, Cameron revealed he’s had conversations with Disney about further expanding the reach of stories revolving around Pandora. “I said, ‘Look, I want to do an animated anthology series that’s essentially in the world, but stories that you wouldn’t have expected from that world.’ There might even be an animated feature in there—it might be a feature for streaming, or a theatrical feature.”
He pointed to The Animatrix, the 2003 animated anthology film set in the world of The Matrix, as an inspiration. “[It’s a great example] for how we can add texture and baroque detail to the world of Avatar,” he said, with “backstory on characters and tangential stuff that happened off-camera within the movies. Who first landed on Pandora? The first expedition. You could go anywhere you want.”
As exciting as that sounds, Cameron isn’t ready to predict a release date this early in the process. “We haven’t done much with that yet. We’re still gathering our stories and that sort of thing … I’ve got to find the boutique filmmakers, the animators, that want to do it.”
Considering how popular Avatar is—and how enticingly rich a canvas Pandora would provide—it doesn’t seem like it’ll be too hard for Cameron to round up the talent for an animated anthology. He’ll just have to find the time to do it. Would you be interested in an Animatrix-style Avatar animated story?
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