James Cameron Writing AVATAR Prequel

Jon Landau, the producer of Avatar, has told MTV that James Cameron is going to write an Avatar prequel.  But don’t get your hopes up that you’ll see it in a movie theater, as he’s writing the prequel for you to read.  Yup, James Cameron will have a new title attached to his name: novelist.  Here’s what Landau said:

“Jim is going to write a novel himself, not a novelization – and there is a distinction. A novelization basically retells the story of the movie. Jim wants to write a novel that is a big, epic story that fills in a lot of things. [We] won’t have time to do [these stories] in the movie, or maybe in sequels, so the novel will give a foundation for the world. It would be something that would lead up to telling the story of the movie, but it would go into much more depth about all the stories that we didn’t have time to deal with – like the schoolhouse and Sigourney [Weaver's character] teaching at the schoolhouse; Jake on Earth and his backstory and how he came here; [the death of] Tommy, Jake’s brother; and Colonel Quaritch, how he ended up there and all that.  I don’t think Jim has ever written a novel before, but his first step of writing a script is often in a novella format, so this is just expanding that, and I think that he’ll be very adept at it.

The plan is for the novel to be released by the end of the year, but who knows if that will happen as Cameron could get distracted or decide to use his time to write a sequel.  The fact is, many people would love to read a novel written by Cameron, so if this thing does get released, I’m sure it will be a big deal.  More as we hear it.