James Cameron is following in the steps of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit by filming the upcoming sequels to Avatar in New Zealand. Cameron made the announcement in the country’s capital of Wellington with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and producer Jon Landau on Monday.
Under an agreement with 20th Century Fox and New Zealand, taxpayers will pay for 25% of the production costs for three sequels to 2009’s Avatar in return for jobs and other boosts to the New Zealand economy. The agreement states that 20th Century Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment will spend at least $413 million in the country on the movies. While James Cameron wouldn’t release the production budget for the sequels, he expects the total cost of all three films to fall below $1 billion due to economies of scale.
“The ‘Avatar’ sequels will provide hundreds of jobs and thousands of hours of work directly in the screen sector as well as jobs right across the economy,” Steven Joyce, New Zealand’s economic minister, said in a statement.
Without the tax incentives the films would’ve had to been produced somewhere else. “Despite my personal advocacy for shooting here we would have had to look very cold and hard at the numbers,” said Cameron. “Business sense would have had to prevail and I am glad it never came to that.”
Luckily for Cameron he received the financing needed to go forward with filming in New Zealand.
“It’s quite a thrill to be officially saying that we’re bringing the Avatar films to New Zealand,” he said during Monday’s press conference. “We had such a wonderful experience here making the first film.”
Cameron has been working on pre-production of the Avatar sequels at his 2,500 acre farm near Wellington, New Zealand. He will begin filming the sequels during early 2015 and plans to complete principle shooting for all three films within nine months. Cameron will also film the sequels in 3D and plans to shoot some sequences at 48 frames per second (instead of the industry standard 24 fps) for a more realistic and clearer look; taking note of Peter Jackson’s use of the technique in The Hobbit trilogy.
20th Century Fox is currently aiming for a Christmas 2016 release for Avatar 2. The following two films are projected to hit theaters in late 2017 and late 2018.
