James Cameron making Avatar sequels out of spite makes much more sense than the truth

By now, the screenshot has probably appeared in your Twitter timeline. It appears to be an excerpt from an interview with Avatar director James Cameron, in which Cameron unashamedly admits to planning the four recently announced Avatar sequels out of sheer spite:

Someone showed me a tweet by this woman Dana something. Dana Smith? And it was, I’m paraphrasing here, but basically something along the lines of see how many of you can name one character or one line of dialogue from Avatar. And the implication was that nobody could, because the film, despite making a lot of money, didn’t make a huge impression on people. So I got my team together and showed them this tweet and said, you know, what do we do about this. And we came up with a lot of ideas, just kinda put everything on the table. But the one we kept returning to was making four Avatar sequels instead of just the one we were planning. The idea being that if we had five Avatar movies spanning, you know, two decades or whatever, and people were constantly being bombarded with Avatar from every direction, something would have to stick. So really, it all started with a tweet. Which is kind of amazing when you think about it.

"I have no idea if this is accurate, but I HOPE it is," is the sentiment that typically accompanies this screenshot whenever someone shares it. And so it is with the deepest regret that I must crush everyone's dreams and inform you that it is not, in fact, accurate. It's a joke.

The tweet the screenshot is referring to does exist. It's by the comedy writer Dana Schwartz, and it went viral shortly after she wrote it in December 2015.

So when Cameron revealed at CinemaCon on Thursday that he's planning four sequels to Avatar instead of the three that he's discussed in the past — and just a few months after Schwartz's joke about Avatar's cultural irrelevance went viral — the timing was too funny to pass up.

Schwartz is blaming pop culture writer Chris Scott for the hoax.

She is also embracing it with deep delight.

Sadly, Cameron's official reasons for more Avatar sequels are much less entertaining. "We began to bump up against the limitations for our art form," he said, explaining that his original plan for three sequels was too restricting and that he needed more space for the "epic saga" he has in mind.

We’ve hit peak lens flare. Here’s how it started.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via