Avatar Star Sam Worthington Opens Up About Returning For The Sequel After So Much Time

Avatar photoByLukas Abramovich Published on
A4D96AD9 73FE 4B05 AB57 2600E655C040

Avatar 2, now officially titled Avatar: The Way of Water, is one of the most anticipated movies of the year. The original movie was released back in 2009, but writer, director, producer, and editor James Cameron managed to assemble the same cast and crew for not one, two, or three, but four sequels. And the first sequel will finally, after numerous delays and waiting for the movie-making technology to be advanced enough for a project like this, the sequel will finally hit theaters on December 16, 2022.

The story of Avatar takes place on the planet called Pandora, and the lead hero is Jake Sully, an ex-marine who is sent there to finish the job of his late brother. Jake manages to connect with Avatar, a genetically created creature who looks the same as the members of the Omaticaya clan, the natives of the planet. Jake is set to earn the trust of the natives so that humans can use their home ground for their own selfish needs. But after falling in love with Neytiri, a beautiful princess of the clan, he becomes aware of what is happening and switches sides in a war that’s going to decide the future of Pandora.

Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 were filmed simultaneously between 2017 and 2020. Three years of filming can already tell us there are big movies in front of us. Sam Worthington recently spoke about what it’s like making a sequel after so much time.

“When I did the first one, I was 30. And when the second one comes out, I’m gonna be pushing 50. In the first one I was in a wheelchair, you know. And by the time we get to the fourth and fifth, I might actually be in a wheelchair by the time we get to do it. It’s great to be a part of such an amazing family and have that longevity, Jim [Cameron] is a very loyal man and he keeps the same people on board, but I’m a very small cog in this. There’s a big creative team behind it, and from what I’ve seen, it’s mind-blowing and marvelous what they’re coming up with.” — Sam Worthington for Variety

RELATED:

‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ Gets Pushed Back Five Days To Avoid ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’

Worthington played the role of Jake Sully, and Zoe Saldana played the role of Neytiri. Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao, CCH Pounder, and Matt Gerald are also reprising their respective roles from the original film, and Sigourney Weaver will return in a different role. Additional cast members include Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Michelle Yeoh, Jemaine Clement, Oona Chaplin, Vin Diesel, and CJ Jones.

The original Avatar movie was released in 2009 and it became a global phenomenon thanks to its groundbreaking visual effects. The movie became the highest-grossing movie of all time, and it managed to stay on that spot to this day. Avengers: Endgame managed to overthrow it in July 2019, but Avatar returned to the top spot in 2020 after another re-release in China.

The remastered version of the original movie will be released in theaters next September, and the sequel will be finally released on December 16, 2020.

Avatar photo

Lukas Abramovich is a freelance writer and photo and video editor based in Croatia. He's also a web designer and holds a Master’s degree in general Computer Science from the Faculty of Informatics based in Pula, Croatia. Since 2018, Lukas has worked on several portals writing about movies, TV shows, and video games. He's currently writing articles for two of them: Fiction Horizon and Comic Basics. He also has a YouTube channel in his native language, and the content there is mostly reviewing popular movies and TV shows. Lukas also has an Instagram page where he once used to post fan-made posters he made, which is something he would like to continue working on, as photo and video editing are also some of his passions. Lukas is a big movie lover who is okay with watching any kind of movie. His favorite movie is Michael Curtiz's Casablanca, but he's a loyal follower of Marvel and DC movies, as well as several other blockbuster franchises he's been following for years; Star Wars, Fast & Furious, Mission: Impossible, and James Cameron's Avatar are only some of them. His favorite director is Christopher Nolan, with Quentin Tarantino and Denis Villeneuve as honorable mentions. Lukas is also a big fan of four fantasy multimedia franchises; The Wizarding World, A Song of Ice and Fire, The Witcher, and The Lord of the Rings. He calls them "the four rulers of the fantasy genre." He loves to write about anything spawned from those franchises (books, games, movies...), as well as anything branded with the Marvel or DC logo. Video games and their adaptations are also something he follows faithfully since he's a big fan of story-driven single-player games like Assassin's Creed, The Last of Us, Uncharted, etc. His favorite video game ever is Red Dead Redemption 2.