Avatar: The Way of Water Star Reveals James Cameron Wrote “Avatar 1.5” Ahead of Official Sequel

Rather than picking up directly where 2009’s Avatar left off, the new sequel Avatar: The Way of Water takes place nearly 15 years after the events of the original, so to help stars Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña get a better appreciation of what their characters have gone through over the years, Worthington confirmed director James Cameron gave them a script to help bridge the gap between the films. The specifics of this script likely won’t ever be fully released, instead having The Way of Water offer context clues to shed more light on what the characters have endured, but the importance of these experiences on shaping the characters the performers played clearly required more explicit insight from Cameron. Avatar: The Way of Water lands in theaters on December 16th.

“Jim, I’m okay to say this, gave me a script that was Avatar 1.5, that, unto itself, is amazing and detailed and full of what they’ve kind of gone through over that gap. I think it was part of Jim realizing that story was about them being warriors and taking on the battles over the clans and things like that,” Worthington shared during a virtual press conference, per /Film. “You wanted to explore what this family dynamic is and the natural extension of this love story. It gave us a good jumping-off point to understand how to fill in that gap that’s missing.”

Even if this Avatar 1.5 won’t be brought to life explicitly, audiences likely shouldn’t have to worry about being confused over plot points, as Cameron previously pointed out how the film having a run time over three hours allowed him to fully flesh out the various characters and relationships necessary to tell this story.

“The goal is to tell an extremely compelling story on an emotional basis,” Cameron shared with Total Film. “I would say the emphasis in the new film is more on character, more on story, more on relationships, more on emotion. We didn’t spend as much time on relationship and emotion in the first film as we do in the second film, and it’s a longer film, because there’s more characters to service. There’s more story to service.”

Avatar: The Way of Water lands in theaters on December 16th.

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