A few weeks ago rumours surfaced that Avatar 4 was in the works, even though parts 2 and 3 haven’t been made yet. Those rumours appeared to be shot down last week when producer John Landau said that only two more movies were definitely moving forward and they would be shot back to back.

However, now Cameron himself has been talking (to MTV) and says there are plans for Avatar 4, even if only two more movies have the greenlight at the moment. He says, “I have an idea for a fourth. I haven’t really put pen to paper on it, but basically it goes back to the early expeditions of Pandora, and kind of what went wrong with the humans and the Na’vi and what that was like to be an explorer and living in that world. Because when we drop in, even in the first film in Avatar 1, as it will be known in the future, we’re dropping into a process that’s 35 years in to a whole colonization. That will complete an arc and if that leads into more, we’ll start, not imitating Star Wars, but it’s a logical thing to do because we’ll have completed the thematic arc by the end of three. The only thing left to do is go back to see what it was like on those first expeditions and create some new characters that then become legacy characters in later films. It’s a plan.”

The director is currently working on the scripts for Avatar 2 and Avatar 3, which are targeted for release in December 2014 and December 2015. Here’s what he had to say about his process of making the sequels a more cohesive working environment, “We’ve spent two years refining the whole pipeline. It was a hideously complex process to make that film and a lot has been said about that, but we don’t want it to be done in the same prototypical way as the first one, we want it to be a much smoother workflow just for creativity reasons.”

However Cameron hasn’t given up on his long-gestating plans to make Battle Angel, as John Landau tells MovieZine, “We’ll focus on Avatar for the next four or five years. Hopefully right after that… I am confident you will see it [Battle Angel]. It’s one of my favorite stories, I think it is an incredible story, a journey of self-discovery of a young woman. It is a movie that begs the question: ‘What does it mean to be human? Are you human if you have a heart, are you human if you have a mind, are you human if you have a soul?’ And I look forward to bringing that film to audiences.”

They are looking to released the project in 2017.