Avatar animated movie spin-offs are planned, says James Cameron

James Cameron wants to branch out his Avatar series into animation.

Not content with plans to make five Avatar movies, which should take the series well into the 2030s, Cameron says he would like to explore other facets of the world of Avatar in animated content.

And it sounds like he’s already pitched Disney on the idea.

“I said, ‘Look, I want to do an animated anthology series that's essentially in the world, but stories that you wouldn't have expected from that world’,” Cameron told Empire magazine in a recent interview.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, these animations are not fully in the works yet. But few figures have as much Hollywood clout as James Cameron. Even his one box office dud, 1989’s The Abyss, is now seen as a minor classic.

It also sounds like Cameron hasn’t quite nailed down what he wants from animated Avatar.

“There might even be an animated feature in there — it might be a feature for streaming, or a theatrical feature,” he says.

Cameron compared his vision to that of The Animatrix, the ground-breaking animated anthology that brought nine short films into one package back in 2003.

"They went afield in the Matrix world,” says Cameron, and that’s clearly what he envisions for the role of an animated Avatar flick or series.

He doesn’t apparently see himself as director of these animated tangents, though. And that’s good news given how busy he’ll be with the main-line Avatar films, and his other side projects.

“We’re still gathering our stories and that sort of thing… I’ve got to find the boutique filmmakers, the animators, that want to do it,” he told Empire.

We are now not too far off the release of the third Avatar film, Avatar: Fire and Ash. It comes out on December 19th.

But it actually flips the script on the series, whose films have always made headlines as some of the most expensive movies ever made.

Avatar: Fire and Ash reportedly had a $250 million production budget, where Avatar: The Way of Water’s upper estimates land at a ridiculous $460 million. That does include marketing costs, though, so the real cost of the new movie will actually be a lot closer to its predecessor.

The Way of Water ended up justifying the expense, making more than $2.3 billion in cinemas.

James Cameron has also said he intends to direct the fourth and fifth Avatar movies.

Cameron collaborator Billie Eilish recently announced she is working with the director on what sounds an awful lot like a concert movie, with filming in progress during her shows at Manchester’s Co-op Live arena.

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