Just in case you were wondering, Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 are still in development, or lack thereof. Director James Cameron has promised that the first sequel to the top box office grossing film will take us to the oceans of Pandora. It’s an environment that Cameron is clearly fond of; his deep sea exploration of Mariana’s Trench shows just how passionate the director is.

The underwater setting does have its complications though. Getting the characters to interact with the underwater environment the way he wants to is one of the biggest problems. But film producer Jon Landau believes that he has found a way to overcome that problem. Rather than simulate scenes in the oceans without actually capturing the actor’s experience of them being underwater, Landau confirms that they will use the motion-capture technology in a tank.

Battle Angel fans won’t be happy with what James Cameron could possibly direct after the Avatar sequels. Despite some of the difficulties that he has experienced writing the Avatar sequels, Cameron has just purchased the rights to Taylor Stevens‘ The Informationist. THR was the first to report on Cameron’s latest acquisition, but without actually knowing which direction Cameron is headed towards after the Avatar sequels, it will be hard to know if he will direct Battle Angel first or if he will direct The Informationist first.

Check out a short synopsis of Stevens’ series of novels and a couple of quotes from the press release below.

It feels like with every update that comes up for Avatar 2 and 3, the status of the project takes two giant steps back. We’ve already heard that Cameron would like to film the Avatar sequels back-to-back, and possibly make the fourth movie a prequel. Now Cameron is giving us a few details as to why the development for the Avatar sequels have been taking so long.

In an interview with The LA Times, Cameron revealed he is taking his time with writing the scripts for the first and second sequel, and that it could be completed before the end of the year. But writing two individual scripts for a films that will have one collective idea is proving to be difficult for the seasoned filmmaker.

While Avatar 2 and 3 are currently in development, the fact that there is an Avatar 4 also on the schedule seems to be downright crazy. Earlier, producer Jon Landau cleared some things up by saying there were no plans to shoot a fourth Avatar film. But that could all change, depending on the success of the next two installments. And if they are successful, who’s to say that Avatar 4 would be a direct follow up to the events of Avatar 3?

Well James Cameron spoke to MTV and said that he is exploring some ideas that would make Avatar 4 a prequel.

Though James Cameron has stated that he will be working on nothing but Avatar sequels, there hasn’t been much development since the announcement was made. Fox had planned to release Avatar 2 in 2014, but producer John Landau stated that in addition to presenting the film using cutting edge 3D technology, they also wanted to shoot the film at 60 frames per second. An average film shoots at 24 FPS and Peter Jackson doubled the rate with The Hobbit films, which were shot at 48 FPS.

Now in an interview with the New York Times, Cameron confirmed that Avatar 2 would not be ready until at 2015 or later. This puts the film’s release a year past the one Fox had projected.