The film’s producer, Jon Landau, toldMTV News studios recently, “Jim is going to write a novel himself. Not a novelization — and there is a distinction. A novelization basically retells the story of the movie. Jim wants to write a novel that is a big, epic story that fills in a lot of things.”
The idea is to drill deeper into the character’s backgrounds, and build the foundation and lore for future movies:
“It would be something that would lead up to telling the story of the movie, but it would go into much more depth about all the stories that we didn’t have time to deal with — like the schoolhouse and Sigourney [Weaver's character] teaching at the schoolhouse; Jake on Earth and his backstory and how he came here; [the death of] Tommy, Jake’s brother; and Colonel Quaritch, how he ended up there and all that,” Landau explained.
Landau goes on to further speculate that the novel could open up their sci-fi universe to other authors for interpretation and fill in the blanks so to speak as a lead in to the sequel that might take place on Pandora several years after where Avatar left off.
As for when “Avatar” fans can look forward to reading Cameron’s novel, Landau had some encouraging news: “I’m hoping by the end of this year.”
