The future holds only Avatar sequels and documentaries for James Cameron

Hopefully none of you still had your fingers crossed for a Terminator sequel from the man who made the first two iconic films. According to a new interview, James Cameron just has no interest in doing that kind of thing anymore.

When asked by the New York Times what projects he’s working on for the future, Cameron offered the following extended soundbite:

I’ve divided my time over the last 16 years over deep ocean exploration and filmmaking. I’ve made two movies in 16 years, and I’ve done eight expeditions. Last year I basically completely disbanded my production company’s development arm. So I’m not interested in developing anything. I’m in the “Avatar” business. Period. That’s it. I’m making “Avatar 2,” “Avatar 3,” maybe “Avatar 4,” and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts. And that all sounds I suppose a little bit restricted, but the point is I think within the “Avatar” landscape I can say everything I need to say that I think needs to be said, in terms of the state of the world and what I think we need to be doing about it. And doing it in an entertaining way. And anything I can’t say in that area, I want to say through documentaries, which I’m continuing. I’ve done five documentaries in the last 10 years, and I’ll hopefully do a lot more. In fact, I’m doing one right now, which is on this, the Deep Sea Challenge project that we just completed the first expedition. So that’ll be a film that’ll get made this year and come out first quarter of next year.

If that makes you suspect that Cameron will be using his imminent Avatar sequels to champion the cause of environmentalism, well, yes, that’s pretty much exactly his plan. Later in the interview, he describes the US response to issues of climate change and corporate resonsibility for the environment as “medieval,” and states that the current status quo is “devastating the natural world.”

As for when we might expect to see Avatar 2’s heavy-handed ecological moralizing, that remains a mystery. Cameron claims that his production team is currently scripting the next few Avatar movies and working on the tool set necessary to create the films — the man does so love inventing new film making tech — and that once that’s all complete they will be able to move onto the actual design stage. Translation: Don’t expect a new Avatar film in the near future. We’re looking at a year wait, at the very least, and quite likely two.