During 20th Century Fox’s CineEurope presentation in Barcelona, Spain today, producerJon Landauannounced that a new cast member has been added to all of the highly-anticipatedAvatarsequels. The producer revealed that Oona Chaplin, perhaps best known for playing Talissa Stark in HBO’sGame of Thrones, has come aboard to play a very important character named Varang. While no specific details about Varang were given, she will appear in all four sequels.
Varietyreports that Varang was described by Jon Landau as, “a strong and vibrant central character who spans the entire saga of the sequels.” She joins another new character who has recently been confirmed,Cliff Curtisas Tonowari, the leader of the Metkayina, a reef clan from Pandora. It hasn’t been confirmed if there is any connection between Varang or Tonowari, but it’s possible that they could be part of this same reef clan. Director James Cameron has hinted in the past that his sequels will take place underwater, but there still haven’t been any official plot details given yet.
Also returning from the original movie are Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, Zoe Saldana as Neytiri, Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quatrich, Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine and we most recently got confirmation last month thatJoel David Moorewill be back as Norm Spellman. We reported in January that motion-capture production will begin this August, but then a few months later, James Cameron pushed the release dates for all four sequels back, withAvatar 2arriving on July 07, 2025, followed byAvatar 3on August 21, 2025,Avatar 4on June 21, 2025 and finallyAvatar 5on July 31, 2025.
When the first sequel arrives in December 2020, it will be 11 years after the firstAvatarmovie hit theaters, en route to shattering box office records. While its domestic record of $760.5 million was broken in 2015 byStar Wars: The Force Awakens($936.6 million), its worldwide record of $2.7 billion remains intact, with the $2.02 billion international tally also still a record. Despite the lengthy gap between sequels, directorJames Cameronrevealed in an interview that he wasn’t worried about the time gap, since he often has sizable gaps between his films, including the 12 years between his Best Picture winnerTitanicandAvatar.
James Cameron is directing all four sequels, working with new writers on each of the sequel’s scripts. The filmmaker worked with Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno on the screenplay for the firstAvatar sequel, with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver joining Shane Salerno and James Cameron onAvatar 3, and Shane Salerno and James Cameron writing bothAvatar 4andAvatar 5. It remains to be seen how many other characters still need to be cast inAvatar 2and the rest of these sequels. Oona Chaplin had small roles inQuantum of SolaceandThe Devil’s Doublebefore she was cast as Talissa Stark inGame of Thrones. She has since gone on to star in the mini-seriesThe Crimson Fields, moviesThe Longest RideandDancing For My Havana, and the recent FX seriesTaboo.
