The long-awaited "Avatar 2" seems to be on the verge of another delay. It's as if James Cameron should forget about these new films because there is definitely some bad juju going on here.
"Avatar 2" was originally set to hit theaters December of 2016 but was delayed until December 2017. The reasoning was due to the fact that 20th Century Fox and director, James Cameron, have not yet kicked off production on the film. Furthermore, the plan is to shoot three movies at once, so that could have helped with the delay.
Back in 2015, James Cameron confirmed to ABC News that "Avatar 2" would come to theaters in 2017, and even went as far as to explain the delay from 2016 to 2017.
"There's a layer of complexity in getting the story to work as a saga across three films that you don't get when you're making a stand-alone film. [My team and I are] writing three simultaneously. And we've done that so that everything tracks throughout the three films," according to Cameron.
For some odd reason, there's another delay to "Avatar 2," but neither 20th Century Fox or James Cameron has released a statement to clear the air on what caused the latest delay. If we were to take an educated guess, we would say it has a lot to do with "Star Wars: Episode 8."
Disney had decided to release Episode 8 during the Christmas season of 2017, that is around the same time "Avatar 2" was set to finally hit theaters. However, seeing as Episode 7 is ripping up records and making a big move to take the record of highest-grossing film of all time from the first "Avatar," it would make perfect sense for 20th Century Fox to refrain from competing with the "Star Wars" franchise.
One must also remember that production and filming have not yet started, so there's another good reason for the unfortunate delay. Not to mention, 20th Century Fox has failed to set a premiere date, so that is riding on our brain a little bit.
Filming three films at the same time is a difficult task, so if anything, we expect "Avatar 2" to make its way to theaters in 2018, but in the December region since Disney will likely have a "Star Wars" film out every year during the Christmas holidays in some shape or form.
This interesting development means "Avatar 2" won't see the light of day until 9-years after the original was launched. That's a very long time to wait for a sequel, and we have to wonder if by then, anyone will care much about these films.
With "Star Wars," Disney is grabbing the Christmas holidays from every competing studio for itself. A bold move but which studio has the metals to compete with "Star Wars" at the box office using a big budget film? That's right, none.
