Peter Jackson revolutionized the way movies are made; kinda. He shot the Lord of the Rings trilogy back-to-back-to-back. Keeping that many characters, sets, special effects, all in your head for that long a period of time is pretty amazing. The 'Pirates' trilogy followed the same technique with parts 2 and 3; but the Avatar trilogy will not. Why? Here's what producer Frank Marshall has to say, via Starlog:
We’re shooting them one at a time, because they’re being written one at a time. [M. Night Shyamalan] is now working on the script for the second movie, but he hasn’t had time to write the second or third ones. He’s looking at the arc of all three. One of the things we’ll be doing is using the sets, ships and elements for each different nation in this film and incorporating them into movies two and three. We’re not waiting. There just isn’t enough time. Night will finish this movie, then the script and then we’ll prepare for the next one. I think it’ll probably happen over six years.
My personal opinion is that they don't trust M. Night Shyamalan. His movies, one after the other, flopped like pancakes. Disney is distributing Avatar and they're not in the business of flops. They like to be hands on during the filming and post-production process. They're not going to let Shyamalan ruin an obvious franchise, so they'll take it one movie at a time. What do you think? Am I being too harsh on Mr. Shyamalan? Just remember, Unbreakable is one of my all time favorite movies.
