The AVATAR Sequel Trilogy Starts In 2017, Says Cameron

We've all been so excited about Star Wars that we forgot about the biggest movie of all time, Avatar. It's weird how we let our breathless anticipation for the Avatar sequels somehow slip away - it feels like just yesterday we were inundated with Na'vi cosplayers and zillions of Tumblr pages dedicated to the rich, vibrant characters and with too many fan theories about the world of Pandora to count. Remember when all we could talk about was how excited we were for Avatars 2-4? How did we lose this spark of ourselves? Have we become so cynical that we've forgotten Sam Worthington is our greatest living movie star?

Fret not - Pandora returns soon-ish! James Cameron says that shooting on the Avatar sequel trilogy is all set to start in 2016, with a 2017 release date: 

“Christmas of ’17 is the target. At least, that’s what we’ve announced. But I don’t consider that to be as important as the fact that when we get all three films done, we drop them a year apart. I call it a meta-narrative that runs across the three movies. Each film stands alone, but it also tells one much larger story. We have design more or less finished, which is an enormous task. It’s been about a two-year task. (We’ve finished) all the creatures and the landscapes, and the new worlds within the world of Pandora that you see. The writing is ongoing, but almost finished. Technical development is done. Stages are done. Infrastructure. So we’re really poised to start after the first of the year.”

I've not been following Avatar sequel trilogy news too closely (I don't want to be spoiled on the sure-to-be groundbreaking narrative twists and turns) so the idea of a 'meta-narrative' is news to me. Each sequel standing apart yet feeding into a larger story is interesting, although I'm wondering if Cameron is going to be bold enough to make those films truly stand alone, ie have different casts. Or if they're just going to be standalone adventures that add up to something bigger, which is less formally interesting. 

All vicious snark aside, I'm really curious to see what audiences make of an Avatar sequel trilogy. It's always been a bad idea to bet against James Cameron, but the guy can't win every hand... can he?