Fans have been waiting for some time to learn when shooting would begin for the highly-anticipated Avatar sequels, and finally, and answer has arrived.

'Avatar 2' Delayed?

While promoting his new documentary about his 2012 record-breaking solo decent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, titled Deepsea Challenge 3D, director James Cameron revealed that shooting was scheduled to begin early next year, and that star Zoe Saldana's pregnancy won't be something to worry about once filming begins.

"The beauty of doing the performance capture is that she can be as big as a house and it really doesn't matter," Cameron told The New York Daily News. "Because we're not photographing her, we're 'capturing' her. She might have some physical limitations running around through the jungle, but we can get around all that stuff."

'Avatar' Sequel Will Take 'Eight or Nine' Months To Film?

Saldana has also spoken out about the film sequels recently, telling Vulture that Avatar was the next sequel movie she was preparing to film, before she begins production on planned Star Trek 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 films.

"I do know that Avatar is coming first," she said. "It's been the one in line for a while now, and we're just waiting for Jim to give us the green light so it can happen early next year. My backpack is ready!"

Saldana also previously revealed that filming for the sequels would be the better part of a year, as all three planned sequels will shoot back-to-back.

The decision to release three sequel films was revealed last year, after the original movie became the highest-grossing film of all-time, with a worldwide take of $2.788 billion, giving director James Cameron the two-best grossing films of all-time and beating his 1997 masterpiece, Titanic, by $600 million.

Avatar 2 is scheduled for a December 2016 release, Avatar 3 and Avatar 4 are scheduled for release in 2017 and 2018.

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