I kind of wondered whether stretching stories to make more movies and, therefore, money would become a thing in Hollywood after The Hobbit was stretched from two to three movies. Well, it looks like James Cameron and 20th Century Fox have taken notice. The Avatar trilogy has been expanded to an Avatar quadrilogy as the two planned sequels will now be three sequels.

The movies are going to be released in back-to-back-to-back years from 2016 to 2018. Cameron has hired on three different screenwriters to co-write each of the three movies with him. War of the Worlds writer and Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles producer Josh Friedman will help on Avatar 2. Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, the husband and wife writing team of the latest Planet of the Apes revival movies, are tapped for Avatar 3. And Shane Salerno, who has worked on Armageddon, Shaft and AVP, among other movies, will round out the quadrilogy on Avatar 4.

According to movie trade publication Deadline, adding superfluous sequels isn’t the only Peter Jackson trademark that Jim Cameron is borrowing. Shooting for all three sequels will take place simultaneously in 2014 but the first sequel won’t be out for two years after that.

I don’t like that we’re getting spammed with more Avatar sequels but I can understand why Cameron and 20th Century Fox would be keen to do this. After all, Avatar rode a massive wave of hype to an unheard of $2.7 billion worldwide box office gross. Even if Avatar’s sequels don’t come close to reaching that individually, they’re still likely to be massive money makers for Fox and Cameron. I can live with that as long as he gives a little bit of that money to his hometown of Kapuskasing. Northern Ontario could always use a little love.

Source: Deadline