James Cameron Made The Writers Do Their Homework For 'Avatar: The Way Of Water’
Image Source: CultureSlate
James Cameron built up the world of Pandora across 800 pages of notes in preparation for Avatar: The Way of Water, then tasked the writers of the movie to read it all.
In an interview with ScreenRant, Cameron talked of the development process for the upcoming film, where he revealed that he “just made a bunch of notes for six months. Literally, just every day sitting at my desk, talking about the world, the characters, trying to fill in what happened the day after Jake woke up in a Na’vi body, and just was carrying the story forward.”
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He had ambitious plans for the franchise, wanting this second film to be as much a critical and commercial success as the first. When he set down those notes in the writer’s room, Cameron made the bold statement, “Do your homework, and then we’ll talk.” Rick Jaffa, Shane Salerno, Amanda Silver, and Josh Friedman did exactly that, and once back together again, Cameron challenged them with a hard question. Not about future stories, but why the first one worked.
He wanted this second film to measure up in every way to that first, which had been released in 2009. It had to hit the heart, mind, and imagination of every viewer, and something deeper that they had a hard time quantifying. An indescribable connection. “If we can’t do that again, then we are going to fail,” he had told the writers. Plot ideas were thrown around, with some rejected for failing to capture that transportive magic of the first. The third, fourth, and fifth installments in the franchise have their ideas ready to go, but hopes are placed upon The Way of Water to see if those ideas really have the feeling the team hoped for.
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Source: Indie Wire
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