Avatar Novel

The Avatar novel was a proposed novel based on the 2009 film, Avatar. It was supposed to be written by the film's writer and director, James Cameron, and would have marked his debut as a novelist. It has been replaced by a set of four novels within the Avatar universe written by sci-fi author Steven Charles Gould.

Plot

The novel was planned as a prequel to the film, and supposed to go into depth about the character's lives prior to the setting of the film. "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," Jon Landau (the film's producer) told MTV.

Release Date

The novel was originally planned to be released at the end of 2010. In September 2011, James Cameron confirmed that it is still being written, but his work on the script for the second film has slowed progress. In 2012, Cameron discussed ideas for an Avatar prequel film, but no further progress on it has been mentioned.

In August 2013, James Cameron announced that he hired sci-fi author Steven Charles Gould to write four stand-alone novels in an Avatar setting.

Future Literature

Landau told MTV that if Cameron's novel is a success, they might look at allowing other authors to write books about Pandora. "We certainly have stories that are set before the movie opens and after," he said. "I think that what we want to do is find out what mediums those stories are best told in. There might be opportunities in publishing to tell some of the backstory, tell some of the earth war stories, what went on in Jake's life before the movie. And we'd have that lead up to the sequel that might take place on Pandora several years after our movie closed."

In 2017, Penguin Random House, 20th Century Fox Consumer Products, and Lightstorm Entertainment agreed to a multi-year publishing deal for the Avatar series. The deal includes "a wide range of books across adult and children’s formats, in multiple territories and languages across the world" intended to "expand and enrich" the Avatar universe. James Cameron will be involved in the development of the titles. The books will start being released in the lead-up to Avatar 2 and will continue through and beyond the release of Avatar 5. It is unknown if Gould's novels will be released through this deal.