A sequel over 10 years in the making at this point has hit another roadblock. Filming on James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar sequels in New Zealand has been postponed due to the country’s attempts to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
The news was confirmed in the New Zealand Herald by producer Jon Landau as he confirmed there would be a delay to a block of filming that was due to take place in Wellington’s Stone Street Studios in April.
The sequels to 2009’s Avatar were due to be completed by the end of this year, with work on a total of four films being done at the same time. As of this writing, Avatar 2, has a release date of December 17th, 2021, with the following three sequels to be released in December 2023, December 2025 and December 2027 respectively.
Landau stated in The Herald, “We’ve delayed it. We had plans to come down Friday night with a group of people and start back up, and we made the decision to hold off and continue working here [Los Angeles] and come down there a little bit later than we’d planned. We’re in the midst of a global crisis, and this is not about the film industry. I think everybody needs to do now whatever we can do, as we say here, to flatten the [coronavirus] curve. We try and monitor all this and look at things and think about what is in the best interest of our crew. I call it our Avatar family. That is really paramount to us above anything.”
No word on when production will once again commence.
