Two sequels were initially greenlit after the massive box office success of the film, but that number was later expanded to four. Cameron has been hard at work on the second and third installments for at least the last five years. The Way of Water and the as-yet-unnamed third film were shot back to back, but the fourth and fifth titles will be shot at a later time, expected to release in 2026 and 2028 respectively. While the epic scales may match, that production process is very much unlike the Lord of the Rings films, which were all filmed simultaneously and released one year apart from one another from 2001-2003.

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In a new interview with Empire promoting Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron its as much. He says that the pressure for these sequels to succeed has been enormous. While the Lord of the Rings films followed a succinct adaptation blueprint, Cameron faced the unique challenge of creating his universe from scratch. See the comments below:

“What I said to the Fox regime at the time was, ‘I’ll do it, but we’ve got to play a larger game here. I don’t want to just do a movie and do a movie and do a movie. I want to tell a bigger story’...I said, ‘Imagine a series of novels like The Lord Of The Rings existed, and we’re adapting them.’ Now, that was great in theory, but then I had to go create the frickin’ novels from which to adapt it.”