Amph James Cameron's Avatar (The Way of Water, Fire and Ash + sequels)

Some details elaborating on some of those images:

1st, regarding Signourney's character:

Weaver tells the outlet she was thrilled to be given that challenge by Cameron, saying how she was 5′ 10′ or 5′ 11′ when she was 11 and so knew how the character Kiri would feel awkward a lot of the time. Cameron says his “Aliens” star was more than up for it:

Cameron: “As an acting challenge, it’s big. We’re gonna have a 60-something actor playing a character [decades younger than] her actual biological age. Sig thought it was all kinds of fun. [She] just became younger. She looked younger, she had more energy, and she never quite stepped out of Kiri for our whole capture period. She had a glow on her face and lightness in her step and a fun spirit.”​

2nd, re: Quaritch:

Lang: “He’s bigger, he’s bluer, he’s p–sed off, but there may possibly be an aspect of humility. When you take two Na’vi arrows in the chest, that’s gonna have some kind of effect on you.
[He] was always a character who moved in straight lines and at right angles. But now he is as lithe as they come. He can move with the same kind of cunning and feral quality that any of the Na’vi can.”​

3rd, re: the setting and plot:

The outlet confirms the RDA will now have a whole set of Recoms/Recombinants – avatars embedded with the memories of human soldiers and they mean business with producer Jon Landau saying: “They are coming back with an armada to take back the prized possession that they lost.”

In addition, the RDA has built an entirely new city named Bridgehead and is stripping away the resources of Pandora’s oceans. They also have a weapons-manufacturing 3D printing facility that can churn out all the munitions they want.​

4th, re: the development, motivation and timeline of the sequels:

Cameron himself also spoke about his larger overall plans for the sequel, saying the point of doing them was to tell a much larger scale story:
“What I said to the Fox regime at the time was, ‘I’ll do it, but we’ve got to play a larger game here. I don’t want to just do a movie and do a movie and do a movie. I want to tell a bigger story.

I said, ‘Imagine a series of novels like The Lord Of The Rings existed, and we’re adapting them.’ Now, that was great in theory, but then I had to go create the ****in’ novels from which to adapt it.

I had to think long and hard whether I even wanted to make another Avatar film, because it was kind of ours to lose. When you’ve done something that’s been that transcendent in terms of success, do you really want to go try and do that again? There’s a lot of pressure on it. I thought about it for a good two years before we finally made a deal.”​

All the details start to add up to that 13 year release gap in interesting, yet very logical ways. This may be the most understood, extended gap between franchise releases in the history of film, given that most tend to have some form of nebulous development hell and other factors at play that we aren't made aware of or can anticipate until long after a film actually comes out.

Which would also explain why this film is falling into that weird middle range for release gaps. Most sequels come out 2-9 years after the first film, and legasequels hit 15+ years later (with the pattern hitting 20-40 years more commonly over the past decade). But that middle gap of 10-14 years, while not exactly rare, tends to be much less common. But start subtracting obvious factors like covid delays and, now, the two years for a deal to even start, and you're already under the 10 year mark. Throw in writing 3 films and then rewriting to expand to 4 films while also developing a theme park and the remaining time really starts to add up shockingly well.

As a result, though, the film starts to potentially benefit from the effects of being nearly a legasequel, with a sort of short-end-generational nostalgia to be able to tap into that it may not have had had it come out even 3 or 4 years sooner.

 

Sounds like he really wants to make 4, which makes it sound like only 5 is in question. Cameron has walked away from franchises and developing projects before, but those were mostly due to things outside of his control (ie: Terminator rights, 9/11's effect on True Lies 2, etc). But if he goes for 4/5 I also don't think he'd want to give up control for the last film.

It is promising that he's already thinking about future projects, however.

 

Yeah, they've only filmed some of 4- the part set before the time jump. Allows the younger cast to age a little for when they shoot the rest of 4 & 5. The scripts and, presumably, the pre-production design elements are also done (or mostly done). This way they can (again, presumably) hit the ground running on those films so it won't take as long, or cost as much, to finish/film them.