PR in the Philippines

(SeaPRwire) –   Inside Lightstorm’s iteration of “the Volume,” the space where Avatar films are acted and filmed, the well-earned golden statuette belonging to the team behind James Cameron’s sci-fi saga is on proud display. The Avatar crew took home the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at this year’s ceremony — in part for their work developing a new cinematic framework to build the world of Pandora — work that Inverse, alongside a small group of journalists, was able to observe firsthand.

On a conventional soundstage fitted with 100 small infrared cameras, visual effects supervisor Richard Baneham explains exactly how real-world physical action shapes the surreal, awe-inspiring elements of this franchise. The process is hard to wrap one’s head around, which makes the new special features launching alongside Fire & Ash’s digital release — such as a short documentary that delves deep into the mechanics of performance capture — such a welcome offering. Even a simplified, condensed breakdown of their workflow makes the multi-year gap between sequels fully understandable.

Bringing Avatar: The Way of Water and Fire and Ash to audiences required 13 years of work and a massive behind-the-scenes effort. Cameron has been open about the obstacles impacting these films, many of them related to budget: he even previously acknowledged he was prepared to step away before completing Avatar 4 (which is already partially filmed) and the fifth planned Avatar installment. Luckily for franchise fans, however, they will not have to say goodbye to this big-screen world just yet. In a conversation with Inverse ahead of Fire & Ash’s home video launch, producer Rae Sanchini confirms that Avatar 4 and 5 are still actively in development — save for a short break to update their production process with new technology.

“We’re really moving into a more generally accessible platform,” Sanchini explains. Lightstorm’s previous system was “highly customized,” with most of it built by Cameron’s production team and refined by visual effects artists at Wēta Digital. Even so, it had an extremely steep learning curve, requiring “extensive training for all new hires.” Adopting “more widely available technology” is expected to streamline this process, right as the team maps out the production pipeline for the two upcoming sequels.

Sanchini goes on to state: “Right now we’re figuring out the schedule. We’re working hard on it right now, budgeting, scheduling, planning, building out our new pipeline for them. As far as we’re concerned, we’re full speed ahead.”

Avatar 4 and 5 are currently scheduled to premiere in theaters in 2029 and 2031, respectively — and while Sanchini describes those release windows as “tentative,” she hopes to lock in that schedule “in the near future.”

“We have the scripts, they’re brilliant,” the filmmaker notes. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re heading forward.”

In the interim, Cameron and Lightstorm plan to keep Avatar fans well supplied with new content. The home release of Fire and Ash includes roughly three hours of bonus footage: while Cameron kept filming details fairly under wraps around the release of The Way of Water, Sanchini says he is now “keen to pull back the curtain” on the process. This shift may be because the two films were shot as two parts of a single overarching story, making Fire and Ash the conclusion of one story chapter. Thankfully, this will not be the end of the franchise — while it will take some time for Cameron’s next vision for the series to come to life, the Lightstorm team appears eager to expand the franchise even further going forward.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is out now exclusively via digital platforms.