There’s really never been a movie franchise quite like what’s about to occur with Avatar. Some studios have taken on a likelihood on making two sequels back-to-back; the last two Back to the Futures were shot that way, as were the primary two Matrix sequels. But James Cameron isn’t making two Avatar sequels back to back; he’s making 4 back to back to back to back. And while the primary of those movies, Avatar: The Way of Water, doesn’t even debut until December, Cameron has already shot a significant slice of the fourth film — which isn’t even scheduled to open in theaters under the perfect circumstances for one more 4 years.

Franchise producer Jon Landau presented some footage from The Way of Water on the Busan International Film Festival this week, where he gave this information on the state of the franchise (via Variety):

We’ve accomplished a lot of the first act of ‘Avatar 4’ and there have been logistical the explanation why we would have liked to try this. We’ve designed a lot of the whole movie for ‘Avatar 4’ but we haven’t actually filmed all of it – just the primary act.

The degree of complexity and size of those movies, and the organizational skills needed to tug this off is largely beyond my comprehension. To already be shooting Avatar 4, you’ve got to not only have Avatar 2 finished, you’ve got to feel confident enough in your plans for Avatar 3 that the film won’t change significantly. Unless, I suppose, you work you possibly can at all times reshoot Avatar 4 down the road if you want to.

When people say they don’t really care about Avatar or they aren’t involved in seeing the sequels, that is the rationale I dismiss those complaints. Even in case you don’t care about Jake Sully or the opposite characters, Cameron is doing something unheard of here. Why wouldn’t you must see what he comes up with?

The late film critic Gene Siskel famously had this test for movies, where he would ask: Is that this thing I just watched as interesting as a documentary concerning the actors sitting around and eating lunch together? It looks like there must be some type of expanded version for Avatar: Is that this sequel as interesting as just watching James Cameron attempt to wrap his brain around making 4 gigantic movies with tons of groundbreaking computer graphics concurrently?

Avatar: The Way of Water is scheduled to open in theaters on December 16, 2022. Avatar 4, which doesn’t have an official subtitle yet, is currently planned for December 18, 2026.