While it’s looking like the first of the Avatar sequels won’t be arriving until at least 2022, the franchise’s Twitter account continues to drop behind the scenes peeks at the mammoth production. The latest is a series of photos from a trip the cast took to Hawaii to prepare for filming–which, knowing the schedule of Avatar 2, are probably at least 3 years old.
The purpose of the Hawaii trip was for the cast of the sequel to “experience the underwater world” that Avatar 2 will be exploring, and the pictures include Sigourney Weaver post-dive, a trio of actors playing new characters, and the entire Sully family including Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, and the actors who play their characters’ children.
ICYMI: Avatar Producer @JonLandau shared a series of photos from behind-the-scenes of the sequels.
To prepare the cast of the Avatar sequels for filming, we took them to Hawaii to experience the underwater world. Check out a few pictures from the trip here: pic.twitter.com/AdXhFhWPlh— Avatar (@officialavatar) September 7, 2020
Considering Avatar started filming in 2017, and had already wrapped up performance capture filming by late 2018, it’s likely that these photos are from 2017 or even earlier. The photo of Worthington and Saldana with their screen family is listed as the first time the Sully family was all together–though the photo seems to include Jack Champion, who plays an unrelated human character, and is missing Trinity Bliss, who will play Jake and Neytiri’s daughter.
Congratulations to @JackTheChamp on completing his last live action shot on Avatar 2! What a difference a few years makes.
ICYMI: Jack will play Spider, a human teenager who was born at Hell’s Gate, but prefers to spend his time in the Pandoran rainforest. pic.twitter.com/h9uxsbN9UW— Avatar (@officialavatar) August 19, 2020
The second photo includes actors Bailey Bass, Cliff Curtis, and Filip Geljo, who will play Na’vi from the newly introduced seaside-dwelling Metkayina clan. It’s still unknown what role Sigourney Weaver will be playing in the sequel, after her character Grace was killed off in the first film.
The original Avatar film also included a preliminary trip to the jungles of Hawaii, as described by lead actor Sam Worthington at the time: “we had to wear tails and ears and a flimsy g-string and run around basically half-naked, pretending to be our characters.” Luckily the latest Hawaii shoot doesn’t seem to have involved as many flimsy g-strings.
The latest news on the Avatar sequels was an announcement from James Cameron that Avatar 2 would not make its planned December 2021 release date, though no new release window has been announced.
