Avatar 2: Director James Cameron reveals new release date and shares filming updates

Fans who are eagerly awaiting the release of Avatar sequels might have to wait a little longer as director James Cameron recently announced that the films will now be released in 2017 instead of coming out in 2016.

At an event promoting the local film industry in New Zealand, Cameron along with his friend and fellow director Peter Jackson revealed that his original plan to have Avatar 2 in theatres by late 2016 was too ambitious, so he decided to push its release date to late 2017, reports ComicBookMovie.

Cameron has taken on a mammoth task of scripting and filming the three Avatar films together. So, it makes sense to give the films the time they need.

"We're writing three simultaneously." Cameron said, "And we've done that so that everything tracks throughout the three films. We're not just going to do one and then make up another one and another one after that. And parallel with that, we're doing all the design. So we've designed all the creatures and the environments."

According to Cameron, he, along with his team of writers, will have all three scripts completed by the end of this month. Screenwriters Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno are also helping with the process.

"There's a layer of complexity in getting the story to work as a saga across three films that you don't get when you're making a stand-alone film," he said.