The official Avatar twitter account has posted the first official look at Edie Falco’s General Ardmore in the form of a behind the scenes set photo. The General is the new head of RDA’s operations on Pandora and likely will be behind the underwater missions.
Here’s a behind the scenes still of Edie Falco as General Ardmore, the new head of RDA activity on Pandora.
There is an assumption that the General will be the new villain given that the military forces will likely want a little payback for ouster of their cohorts and the dismantling of the mining operations on Pandora. Hopefully, we’ll get to explore a lot more of the RDA/military side of the franchise which I feel was little bit lacking in Avatar. I assume because they really had planned on spending more time world building for the Na’vi and Pandora.
We learned recently the RDA’s new base of operations will be called Bridgehead after Hell’s Gate was overtaken by rebellion forces.
It’s interesting because there is an expectation that Stephen Lang’s bombastic/intimidating Colonel Quaritch will be making a comeback as well, despite dying in the first film. I’m slightly curious if they’ll be resurrecting him through cloning methods given this has been established with the avatars in the previous film.
It might be a while before we get an official trailer for Avatar 2 given that the film won’t be released until December 16th, 2022 after production delays. However, James Cameron recently said they completed live-action filming for Avatar 2 and almost fully done with Avatar 3.
We’ll have to wait to hear if they’ll be moving on to start shooting Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 either motion capture or live-action portions considering that motion capture was mostly taking place in California and live-action in Wellington, New Zealand.
The Avatar sequels are chugging along as Avatar 2 has completed live-action filming with Avatar 3 about to complete as well.
It’s official Twitter account has been posting random information and set photos revealing tidbits about the new movies including new military vehicles likely from RDA’s SpecOps. The latest one includes a science lab at a new RDA installation that will be called Bridgehead as they lost the other installation Hell’s Gate in the last film.
From the set of the Avatar sequels: A glimpse of a small part of the Science Lab, a key facility at the RDA’s new Bridgehead installation. pic.twitter.com/oC2txKEPdZ
The evil corporation attempted to commit genocide against the native population of Pandora to secure their mining operation and likely will be more than a little upset when they return with extra forces.
Avatar 2 has new release date of December 16th, 2022 and Avatar 3 is set for December 20th, 2024.
During a one-on-one chat with Arnold Schwarzenegger on Arnold’s YouTube channel, director James Cameron has announced how much of his Avatar sequels (four of them) have completed filming at this point. You might remember that production halted just before everyone in the crew was going to return to New Zealand’s Stone Street Studios in Wellington, to do some extensive live-action shooting for Avatar 2 and Avatar 3.
Here is what Jim had to say about the status of the two upcoming Avatar films during his chat with the Terminator franchise actor. As it sounds like the filming portion for both films is almost completed.
CAMERON: “Well, COVID hit us like it hit everyone. We lost about four and a half months of production as a result of that we’ve rolled around one more full year for a release in December of 2022. That’s been announced already but that doesn’t mean I have an extra year to finish the film because the day we deliver Avatar 2 we’ll just start working on Avatar 3.”
“So, where we are right now, I’m down in New Zealand shooting the remainder of the live-action we’ve got 10% left to go. We’re 100% complete on Avatar 2 and we’re sort of 95% compete on Avatar 3.
“We’re very lucky in that we chose [New Zealand] as our production site years ago.”
There is still a heap of post-production work to finish on the two massive movies and Cameron will then expectedly move into making Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 next.
Avatar 2 has new release date of December 16th, 2022 and Avatar 3 is set for December 20th, 2024.
The official Avatar Twitter account has dropped two new pieces of concept artwork from the upcoming films, this time highlighting a brand new RDA submersible vehicle called The Crabsuit.
The Crabsuit: A human driven multifunction submersible. One of the many new RDA vehicles that will be seen in the Avatar sequels.
The Crabsuit: A human driven multifunction submersible. One of the many new RDA vehicles that will be seen in the Avatar sequels.
It seems like they’ve sort of used the cockpit from the C-21 Dragon Assault Ship from the first movie. The Sea Dragon was another vehicle previously revealed through set photos.
James Cameron and the team recently resumed the live-action portion of filming at Stone Street Studios in Wellington, New Zealand.
However, it was officially announced that the release date would be getting pushed back an entire year because of the production delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yesterday, producer Jon Landau announced via his Instagram account (has oddly removed all his previous tweets) that the Avatar sequels have now resumed the live-action portion of the filming in Wellington, New Zealand.
Production is taking place at the Stone Street Studios facility.
Jon posted this image from the set.
LANDAU: “Used my iPhone to snap a picture of our first shot back in production on the Avatar sequels.”
This comes after their 14-day mandatory isolation as per government regulations.
The Avatar sequels are seemingly the first major productions to resume after the pandemic first broke out, worth noting that New Zealand has only had two new cases of COVID-19 over the last 24 days. The remote island nation is certainly in much better position to resume filming than the United States or even the United Kingdom.
It’s unknown if the production delays from back in March will directly impact the release date of December 17th, 2021.
Despite original reports that Wes Ball’s new Planet of The Apes film would be a hard reboot of the franchise, the director has come out publicly to debunk that the film will be ignoring or undoing the work of the last three films.
While speaking with Discussing Film, Wes dropped an interesting tidbit about the creative team working on the new Apes film that includes Avatar 2 and Terminator: Dark Fate screenwriter Josh Friedman tackling the script.
BALL: “We were using the same material, the same kind of technology, we were using a lot of the same people involved – I had asked Andy Serkis to join Mouse Guard. So it was kind of natural fit. I understand where it came from and my big thing was: what do you do for a Planet of the Apes sequel? One, those last three movies are one of the great trilogies we have in modern movie history. They are just so well done. They honored the original movies they sprang from, the Charlton Heston movies, but they grounded it in a modern sensibility and it just worked. Caesar is one of the great movie characters that we’ll have throughout time. So what do you do to follow that up, right? At the same time, I wasn’t interested in doing a part four either. We want to also do our own thing.”
“We have a take. We have a way of staying in the universe that was created before us, but we’re also opening ourselves up in being able to do some really cool new stuff. Again, I’m trying to be careful here. I’ll say this, for fans of the original three don’t worry – you’re in good hands. The original writers and producers that came up with Rise and Dawn, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, they’re also on board with this. Josh Friedman is writing this thing, a lot of the same crew is kind of involved. We will feel like we’re part of that original trilogy, but at the same time we’re able to do some really cool new stuff. It will be really exciting to see on the biggest screen possible.”
It sounds like that “technology” tidbit would infer that Weta Digital will be making a return for his incarnation. Weta had previously worked on all three of the recent films.
Interestingly enough, Wes worked closely with Weta Digital in the past on his Maze Runner sequels Mazer Runner: The Scorch Trials and Maze Runner: The Death Cure.
He was also set to work again with Weta for his fantasy film Mouse Guard before Disney and 20th Century Studios pulled the plug on it post-merger. The graphic novel adaptation was going to be produced by Matt Reeves with Andy Serkis taking a lead role as the villain.
The director also mentions they’re still in the scripting and production design phase of the film but could begin “virtual production” soon.
BALL: “Well, Planet of the Apes is moving forward and we have a giant art team cranking away on some incredible concept art. We’ve got the screenplay continuing to move forward, that will take the time that it takes and so that’s all good. Planet of the Apes is moving forward baby! Not only that, but we could actually be in virtual production relatively soon because it’s largely a CG movie.”
I’m really curious if they’re going to push the franchise deep into the future side of things. As the recent trilogy only covered the settings of the final films in the franchise that took cues from the final two installments, Conquest and Battle.
I think it’ll be interesting to see what the ape society looks like in two thousand years or at the very least a couple of hundred years. Wes can surely honor the look and legacy of the first three films while pushing the franchise in a new direction to give it new life along with showcasing what ape cities could like in the future. It also allows them to bring back Andy Serkis to play another chimpanzee character, not unlike how Roddy McDowall played Cornelius and then later on his son Caesar.
THE RONIN 