Thirteen years after the original "Avatar" burst into theaters and became the highest-grossing film ever made, James Cameron is finally delivering the first of four planned sequels next month.
The more than a decade-long wait for "Avatar: The Way of Water" was due in part to Cameron not wanting to move forward until he felt the story was completely ready. Indeed, the 68-year-old revealed in a recent interview with Total Film magazine that he scrapped a full script for an early version of 'Avatar 2'.
"I was working with a team of writers. We had a lot of ideas. We kept trying to corral it into a box and it never quite fit," Cameron said in the December issue. "So at a certain point, I said, 'I'll just finish it, and see if it's a movie.'"
The final treatment topped out at 130 pages and was, in the "Titanic" director's words, "a hell of a read," but wasn't something he thought was worth committing to the screen.
It ticked every other box, but it didn't tick that one. And I thought, 'We shouldn't make this movie.' So I set it aside.James Cameron
Cameron said that the script "was missing one of those critical elements about sequels, which is that it didn't go enough into the unexpected."
For Cameron, who has experienced massive success both critically and at the box office with his sequels — he directed "Aliens" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" — that was a must-have.
"The key to a sequel is to be surprising in ways that are not off-putting," he told Total Film. "To reconnect with the familiar what was fun and good, and that caused the first film to be a hit. But doing it in a way that's unexpected, or that takes you someplace that's unexpected."
Cameron also felt that the script didn't connect to the "spiritual component" of the world of "Avatar".
"It ticked every other box, but it didn't tick that one," he said. "And I thought, 'We shouldn't make this movie.' So I set it aside."
But Cameron and his writing team's work didn't all go to waste. He said "the elements that we needed" from the original script were incorporated into "The Way of Water" and the untitled "Avatar 3", which is slated for 2024.
Everything else was adapted into a graphic novel, "Avatar: The High Ground", which details the events between the original film and "The Way of Water".
"We figured out a way to restructure the elements that we needed to distribute across the first two of the sequels, and relaunched it in a completely different way," he said. "You'll be able to see that interim battle that took place between movie one and movie two."
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