Avatar is a film that never fails to polarise opinion among movie fanatics. Some hail it as one of the most visually stunning works in cinematography; others say it relies on a dull plot that has been done a thousand times over in various forms.
But whichever side of the fence you're on, there's no denying that it marked a huge breakthrough in cinematic technology.
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Whichever way you look at it, Avatar was a landmark movie and now production is underway for not one, not, two, not three, but four sequels directed by James Cameron... and they're not exactly scrimping on the budget.
Credit: 20th Century Fox
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The award-winning director will shoot all four films in succession, something that has never been done before, on a budget of somewhere around $1 billion (£745 million). Turns out all that CGI doesn't come cheap.
It may sound like an insane amount of money, but when you consider the first film grossed $2.8bn (£2.1bn) worldwide, the potential rewards for Fox become very apparent.
For fans, there'll be plenty of familiar elements - one of which is the return of principal bad guy, Stephen Lang's Colonel Quartich, who will be back and even worse than before, despite having taken two giant arrows to the chest in the first film.
"The interesting conceit of the Avatar sequels is it's pretty much the same characters," Cameron told Empire.
Credit: 20th Century Fox
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"There are new characters and a lot of new settings and creatures, so I'm taking characters you know and putting them in unfamiliar places and moving them on this greater journey.
"But it's not a whole bunch of new characters every time. There's not a new villain every time, which is interesting. Same guy. Same motherfucker through all four movies. He is so good and he just gets better. I know Stephen Lang is gonna knock this out of the park."
Hmm, seems a good opportunity to remind ourselves of the original movie trailer:
Credit: 20th Century Fox
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Cameron admitted that shooting four high-budget movies all at once is something of a mammoth task, and he blames Peter Jackson for giving him the idea.
"I said: 'It's your fault I'm doing this, motherfucker!'" he recalled.
"It's one big story. But I would say a little bit different from The Lord Of The Rings, which you knew was a trilogy and that allowed you to accept a sort of truncated ending for movies one and two and then a fulfilment.
"This is a greater narrative broken up into four complete stories."
Fox has scheduled the first Avatar sequel for release on 18 December 2020. The following one comes a year later, with the last two in December 2024 and 2025.
Featured Image Credit: 20th Century FoxTopics: Sequel, Lord Of The Rings