'Avatar 2' still years away

If you’re a fan of eternally-in-development science-fiction franchise extensions, then this has been a tantalizing week for you, you weirdo. First, Star Wars consigliere Rick McCallum announced that the live-action Star Wars TV show was going to be titled Star Wars: Underworld, though he later backtracked and told EW it was just a working title. He also said the show — for which 50 scripts have already been written, why not — would be coming out in five or six years. Well, the second half of this decade just got more crowded: Jon Landau, producer of Avatar, has told Bleeding Cool that the first sequel for Avatar is “about four years away.” That directly contradicts James Cameron’s stated goal of releasing the two Avatar sequels on Christmas 2014 and Christmas 2015, but to be fair, he said that almost exactly one year ago, and no one really took him seriously.

So Avatar 2 probably won’t be coming out until 2016, although its release date will probably be more like 2018 by the time I finish this sentence. (Representatives for 20th Century Fox did not respond to calls for comment.) The point is, we can all look forward to a magic day roughly a decade from now, when Avatar 2 is in theaters, Star Wars: Underworld is on TV, George R. R. Martin’s The Winds of Winter is in bookstores, Lauryn Hill’s new album is tearing up iTunes, and zombie J.D. Salinger writes Catcher 2: Out of the Rye-ing Pan, Into the Fire.

Follow Darren on Twitter: @EWDarrenFranich

Read more:

Disney opening ‘Avatar’-themed park

‘Avatar 2’ might go under the sea