‘Avatar’ sequels will be standalone films, ‘Bond 25, ‘Dune, ‘Furious 9’ get release dates, ‘Terminator Dark Fate’
Movie News round-up: Avatar films will be approached as standalone projects, Bond 25, Dune and new Furious film all get a release date.
This bigger news is the latest on Terminator 6…now titled Dark Fate -see below.
Avatar 2 through Avatar 4? Avatar 5?
Avatar producer Jon Landau recently took part in a Q&A at Collider’s IMAX screening of Alita: Battle Angel, which he also produced, and he revealed that each of the Avatar sequels is being approached as a standalone film.
“Each movie is a standalone movie that we would wanna go see. You don’t need to have seen the first Avatar to see Avatar 2. It sits there and we’re gonna take people on a visual and an emotional journey that comes to its own conclusion. Okay, step back. Is that a movie we would wanna make just as a standalone story? Yes. Now we do the same thing on Movie 3, Movie 4, and Movie 5. What we have the luxury of on Avatar is the world of Pandora. We get to keep it there but everything can be new, we’re not treading new ground.”
Release Dates: Dune, Bond 25, Furious 9
A bunch of release date announcements hit Friday ahead of the Presidents Day weekend.
Warner Bros. Pictures has set a November 20th 2020 release date for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune which will play in both 3D and IMAX theaters over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Universal Pictures has set a May 22nd 2020 date for the ninth Fast & Furious movie with the film expected to battle for the Memorial Day Weekend against Godzilla Vs. Kong and the new SpongeBob Movie.
Then there is Bond…James Bond.
The next James Bond film has been pushed back by two months from its Valentine’s Day 2020 date and will now open on the Wednesday before Easter on April 8th 2020 and while it has no major competition at the moment, Disney is expected to release its live-action Mulan around that time.
More on Bond 25…
The Playlist reports Scott Z. Burns is coming aboard to overhaul the current screenplay by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade.
Since penning Paul Greengrass‘ The Bourne Ultimatum in 2007, Burns has become something of a Hollywood fixer for drafts needing a boost.
Terminator 6 will be called…
James Cameron is returning, as a producer, to the Terminator franchise and IGN reports that the upcoming big budget film directed by Tim Miller (Deadpool) will be titled Terminator: Dark Fate.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is back once again as the Terminator, and Mackenzie Davis is coming aboard in a key role that appears to be taking over the lead female role from Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor. Cameron is about to pull a Halloween (2018), ignoring all the subpar films that happened after T2: Judgement Day.
Back in 2017, Cameron explained the timeline like this:
“This is a continuation of the story from Terminator 1 and Terminator 2. And we’re pretending the other films were a bad dream. Or an alternate timeline, which is permissible in our multi-verse. This was really driven more by [Tim] than anybody, surprisingly, because I came in pretty agnostic about where we took it. The only thing I insisted on was that we somehow revamp it and reinvent it for the 21st century.”
