MTV News is reporting that James Cameron is planning to write a prequel novel to his current blockbuster film Avatar. No word on who would publish it, but based on the box office take the film has racked up, it seems more a mater of who rather than if.
Producer Jon Landau tells MTV that “Jim wants to write a novel that is a big, epic story that fills in a lot of things.” Landau specifically mentions “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 doesn’t think Cameron has ever written a novel before, but did say that when he writes a screenplay, Cameron usually starts by writing something similar to a novella. Cameron’s writing credits include the screenplays for the first two Terminator films and True Lies, as well as episodes of Dark Angel and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.