Avatar 3 along with its two sequels suffered a release date delay. While the sequels got pushed back much further, Avatar 3 was only delayed for a year from 2024 to 2025. I use “only” because even though a year’s delay would ordinarily be a lot for any regular movie, Avatar as a franchise is used to being delayed quite often, with the delays often happening in years due to the film refusing to give up its lucrative December slot. Anticipating fan disappointment, producer Jon Landau took to social media to not only issue a statement, but also share what is possibly our first behind the scenes look from the third Avatar movie.
Remarking on the time it takes to bring each of these movies to life, Landau called the movies an “epic undertaking”, while emphasizing the effort the team is putting into these movies to bring audiences back to the world of Pandora. Avatar: The Way of Water itself was subject to numerous delays, at one point being slated to release as early as 2016 or 2017. The additional delays would undoubtedly help James Cameron and his crew polish the VFX to ridiculous levels of realism and deliver the best possible movie on screen, visually at least.
This “set photo” gives us a glimpse at what the camera sees through the virtual cinematography technique. What’s interesting about this behind the scenes look is that it provides us with the first official still from Avatar 3. I’ve tried zooming and sharpening it a bit and set it as the post’s featured image, but I’ll share it here again so you can dissect it easily.
It’s hard to tell what’s going on here, but it does seem to feature the Sully family couple: Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully staring at something, presumably angry or upset, and Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri, weeping in tears. Behind them we see a crashed banshee and some humans on scene, as though they’re dissecting a “crime scene”. Curiously, one of the humans does not seem to be sporting breathing gear that’s necessary on Pandora. A major hint, or simply something that will be added in post?
Fans at Avatar’s fandom message boards have even more to add to the speculation. They reference a scene from a leaked version of the script that refers to a major oil spill that occurs on Pandora, along the lines of Exxon. If so, that explains the humans on the scene and their attempts to clean up the mess. If this is on Pandora, its Exxon equivalent would be the RDA itself, possibly causing major damage to Pandora’s sea life, and maybe even a few deaths, including some Tulkuns. This fits in neatly with Cameron’s environmentalist themes and sounds like it could introduce a meaty conflict between humans and the Na’vi.
Avatar 3 is now slated for release on December 19, 2025.
