While the Avatar saga is, so far, a primarily cinematic story, James Cameron’s imaginative world has already expanded into other mediums. Avatar: The Game and Frontiers Of Pandora have given gamers the chance to explore the Na’vi homeworld in a more interactive way, while ‘Pandora – The World Of Avatar’ at Walt Disney World offers a rare opportunity for fans to be transported to the lush moon itself in theme park form. But Cameron has ideas for a new branch of the Avatar (home)tree – one that would sit neatly alongside the theatrical entries.
As he tells Empire in our world-exclusive Avatar: Fire And Ash issue, he’s spoken to Disney about the possibility of telling more Avatar stories in animation. “I said, ‘Look, I want to do an animated anthology series that's essentially in the world, but stories that you wouldn't have expected from that world’,” he reveals. “There might even be an animated feature in there – it might be a feature for streaming, or a theatrical feature.”
While animated anthologies like Love, Death + Robots and Secret Level have flourished on streaming, there are previous examples of cinematic worlds taking a similar approach to explore deeper lore. “A good early example is The Animatrix, where they went afield in the Matrix world,” says Cameron. “These are all great examples for how we can add texture and baroque detail to the world of Avatar.” The animated stories could, he says, deliver “backstory on characters and tangential stuff that happened off-camera within the movies. Who first landed on Pandora? The first expedition. You could go anywhere you want.”
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It’s early days on the idea for now. “We haven't done much with that yet,” Cameron concedes. (He has, after all, been rather busy with The Way Of Water and Fire And Ash.) “We're still gathering our stories and that sort of thing,” he adds, “and I've got to find the boutique filmmakers, the animators, that want to do it.” Still, the seed has been planted – here’s hoping it flourishes like a glowing piece of Pandoran flora.