Avatar 2 has faced setback after setback in the years since the original movie first premiered in 2009, but not even a global pandemic is going to stop it this time.
Work on the sequel is set to resume soon in New Zealand, which was reported to have successfully eliminated covid-19 inside the country earlier in May. To celebrate the imminent return to work, producer and longtime James Cameron collaborator Jon Landau shared a taste of what’s to come on his Instagram.
In a post shared on Friday, Landau noted that the sets are “ready” and the crew should be returning to New Zealand sometime “next week,” presumably after Memorial Day. That would make it one of the first big Hollywood productions to get back to work since the global pandemic brought much of the world to a standstill in March.
Landau also shared a behind the scenes look at two of the watercraft that will appear in the upcoming sequel. He identifies the smaller boat, the one at the top of the photo, as a “Picador jetboat” and the larger one, at the bottom of the image, as “the Matador, a high speed forward command vessel.”
Alien ocean and/or seascapes are apparently going to play a much bigger role in Avatar 2 than they did in the first movie. In another Instagram photo posted one week earlier, Landau shared a look at actors Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Kate Winslet, and Cliff Curtis inside the production’s “900,000 gallon performance capture tank that we built for the Avatar sequels.”
Cameron and Landau have always had big plans for following up the 2009 blockbuster. There are four sequels planned, with Avatar 2 currently on the calendar for a Dec. 17, 2021 release.