Avatar was the sci-fi hit of 2009, and is the highest grossing film of all time at $2.782 billion. Director James Cameron’s (Aliens, Titanic, The Terminator) greenlighted sequels (Avatar 2, 3 and 4) will begin in 2016 and will recur annually. Colonel Miles Quaritch was the real villain of Avatar and he, and his portrayer, Men Who Stare at Goats’ Stephen Lang, will return for Avatar 2. Those who haven’t seen Avatar and have plans to watch it without knowing major plot details may want to skip over the next paragraph.
If you remember, at the end of the film’s epic final battle, Quaritch is killed by Na’vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) when the colonel tries to kill her human boyfriend Jake Sully (Sam Worthington). “Stephen was so memorable in the first film, we’re privileged to have him back,” Cameron said. “I’m not going to say exactly how we’re bringing him back, but it’s a science fiction story, after all. His character will evolve into really unexpected places across the arc of our new three-film saga. I really look forward to working with such a gifted actor, who’s also become a good friend.” Worthington, Saldana and Sigourney Weaver are still only rumoured to star, odd to cast in the villain before the hero.
We move onto Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Marvel’s expected sequel to the 2011 box office success of The First Avenger is fast approaching but it’s been weeks since we got a proper bit of news about it. Today, director Joe and Anthony Russo have brought us up to speed with a few new stills (click next to cycle through) and an awesome poster (on which note the multiple SHIELD helicarriers and the Washington Monument backdrop). Then came this!
There’s only about 10 seconds worth of footage within that clip, featuring Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and The Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) joining Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), but the full trailer, which will likely be about 2 to 2 and half minutes long, premiers tomorrow on I-Tunes. Expect full coverage from us, Tuorhoth Movies. Captain America: The Winter Soldier also stars Robert Redford, Frank Grillo, Emily Van Camp, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Dominic Cooper, Hayley Attwell, Toby Jones and Jenny Agutter.
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones was a great financial (taking just $75 million off a $60 million budget – it didn’t loose money but, to be called a success, a film has to gross double it’s budget so that investors get more profit than they put into the film) and critical (see our verdict in August’s review here) disappointment. The immanent plans for a sequel were postponed but a recent report suggests that Lily Collins, Robert Sheehan, Jamie Campbell Bower, Lena Headey, Jared Harris, Aidan Turner and Jonathan Rhys Meyers will return for the sequel with new addition Sigourney weaver, The Mortal Instruments: City of Ashes.
“The fan response, from the blogosphere and the thousands of mails we have received, has encouraged us to keep going.” Constantin Film’s Martin Moszkowicz tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s been overwhelmingly positive, in contrast to some other titles. We are analysing what we did wrong with the first film, particularly with the positioning and marketing, and what changes we have to make. We are working with a great group of people to reposition the franchise.”
I think by positioning and marketing Moszkowicz is referring to the fact that in this year City of Bones was going against three other teen fantasy book adaptations (flops like The Host and Beautiful Creatures, the more grown up How I Live Now and the already successful The Hunger Games, with it’s sequel Catching Fire). Filming is once again likely to start next year with a 2015 release date. By then, everyone’s realised that Twilight and The Hunger Games had a magic formula for young adult films (2014 only has The Maze Runner and Divergent – both of which are way too similar to The Hunger Games) and that attempting these kind of films are bad idea without a experienced team. I don’t think that City of Bones’ director Harald Zwart is likely to return for Ashes as he’s the man who brought you The Karate Kid remake which featured no Karate and the Agent Cody Banks films.
Peter Jackson is easily the greatest director of New Zealand, and perhaps the greatest in the fantasy genre as a whole. He brought us the immortally classic The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the underrated prequel The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey plus The Lovely Bones, Heavenly Creatures and King Kong. His 2013 and 2014 productions are continuing his Middle-Earth saga with The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Dec 13th 2013) and the ultimate There and Back Again (Dec 19th 2014). But this is about Jackson’s future, post Hobbit.
“We have got a few bits and pieces that we are working on, Fran (Walsh) and I.” Jackson tells us. “The things that we are most excited about are some New Zealand stories. We just want to step off the Hollywood blockbuster thing for a while and we’ve had a few New Zealand stories in line for a while that we think would make great films. The Heavenly Creatures mode really. But one thing has led to another and we have never had time. We’ve made a conscious decision that in the limited years we have left to make movies to tell some New Zealand stories.”
The earliest we could see any of these stories are in 2016 as 2015 is already scheduled for another sequel, The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun). He and Steven Spielberg are signed on to bring us the return to Herge’s mo-cap world of adventure. Whatever this New Zealand project is, it’s likely to star Jackson regular Andy Serkis.
Avatar 2 – Christmas 2016
Captain America: The Winter Soldier – May 2nd 2014
The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun – late 2015
Untitled Peter Jackson/Fran Walsh New Zealand project – 2016?
Untitled Tintin sequel – 2017/18?
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