It Took Three Screenwriting Teams To Write The Avatar Sequels

The most promising sign we won't have to wait another 13 years for more "Avatar" sequels — other than James Cameron finally taking a breather from his pioneering work as an ocean explorer — is the extensive amount of work he has already put into them. Producer Jon Landau confirmed to Collider in December that principal photography for 95% of "Avatar 3" and the first act of "Avatar 4," along with scripts for every film, are complete.

Cameron has cited "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy (though he should probably credit "The Matrix" franchise too) as his model, where director Peter Jackson shot all three films back-to-back. Seeing as Cameron literally had to write the book on "Avatar," Jackson's task looks far less daunting by comparison. George Lucas may be the only other person who has undertaken something similar.

Developing scripts for four "Avatar" films simultaneously demanded a systematic approach unlike anything else in Hollywood. Marvel has its pipeline of screenwriters that it assigns to upcoming projects based on the quality of their past work, but other studios have not been as consistent in how they commission screenplays. Screenwriter Steve Kloves penned seven of eight "Harry Potter" films, whereas each entry in "The Hunger Games" franchise (counting both "Mockingjay" parts together) had its own independent screenwriting team. In some cases, studios have hedged their bets, as Warner Brothers did with "Wonder Woman," which had two screenwriters authoring competing scripts set during World War I or the Crimean War. 

To expand "Avatar" from one film to an entire franchise and still support a release schedule of every two years, Cameron needed an efficient screenwriting method that could make up for a lack of source material but deliver on the open ended prompt.

To fuel his "Avatar" machine, Cameron assembled a team of veteran sci-fi screenwriters consisting of married writing and producing duo Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver ("Planet of the Apes" reboot trilogy), showrunner and writer Josh Friedman ("Foundation," "War of the Worlds," "Terminator: Dark Fate") and writer-producer Shane Salerno ("Armageddon," "Ghost Recon: Wild Lands").

While he has admitted to taking control of the script at times (Cameron even completed the "Avatar 2" script himself before largely scrapping it and starting over), he told The Wrap:

"The key to it was we were going to create three screenwriting teams ... And then it turned out that there was a writing team, the ampersand team that came in. There were actually four of them, one of me. The five of us sat in a room with a whiteboard and we broke the story across all the films to the end, which ultimately became [movies] two through five."

Rather than immediately designating writers to specific films, as Marvel might have done, Cameron explained:

"I didn't tell them which one they were going to work on because the second I assigned a specific story, they would've tuned out every time we started talking about one of the other ones. I said, 'You're all equally invested in the entire story arc until we break up and go to our separate corners to go to draft.' On the very last day, which was right before Christmas, I said, 'Okay, you're doing this one and you're doing this one.' And then they promptly tuned out for most of the day."

Combined with the talent involved, Cameron allowing time for the writers to latch on to one chapter over another reassures the "Avatar" films will tell a strong narrative both across and within films.