Blockbuster Hollywood filmmaker James Cameron is leaving no stone unturned in his work for Avatar 2, the first of his four upcoming sequels to the worldwide blockbuster, Avatar, released in 2009, which currently is the highest-grossing film in the world with $2.84 billion. Avatar had reigned at the top of the list for a decade before being surpassed by Marvel Studios' superhero flick, Avengers: Endgame, in 2019, before Cameron's epic science fiction venture regained the top spot after the film was re-released across several parts of the world.
Having said that, plans for an Avatar game were also announced four years back in 2017, which have now come true as leading video-game giant Ubisoft has dropped the first look trailer for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, set to arrive next year. Ubisoft Massive's Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s first visuals were revealed this past weekend at the Ubisoft Forward E3 conference, which has fans being transported back to Pandora, with the trailer providing glimpses of numerous new picturesque locations along with some of the creatures and the inhabitants in the game that could also possibly pop up in the upcoming film sequels.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will be a first-person action-adventure game that will once again witness the Na'vi against humans and their mechs and is set this time in the Snowdrop Engine. The Massive team has collaborated to an extensive level with James Cameron's production company to make the game, which has been delayed to 2022 owing to the pandemic.
As for the Avatar films, James Cameron, who made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in April, revealed that Avatar 2 will show a lot more water, while also delving into the pressure of making the upcoming four sequels. He told Fallon, "A lot of our scenes are in the ocean, so I'm combining things that I love. Making Avatar and going into the ocean, I love all that stuff." He also said, "We just try to be kind of true to what people love about the first film and take it into whole new areas."
The Titanic director further spoke about the movie-going experience, "What we really need to focus on is getting back to theaters. Hopefully we can still have movies like that. Let's pray that the theaters are there after this pandemic and this shift to streaming." Avatar 2 will be hitting theatres on December 16, 2022 after being "rolled around a full year" due to the pandemic, with Disney announcing that Avatar 3 will be out on December 20, 2024, followed by plans for the fourth and fifth Avatar sequels releases speculated for 2026 and 2028.
Ubisoft's synopsis for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is as follows: "In this new, standalone story, play as a Na’vi and embark on a journey across the Western Frontier, a never-before-seen part of Pandora. Explore a living and reactive world inhabited by unique creatures and new characters, and push back the formidable RDA forces that threaten it." Watch the Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora first look trailer below: