The latest photo from the sets of Avatar 2 has been circulating online. The first look of the long-awaited film shows newly added favourites Kate Winslet and Cliff Curtis alongside Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington swimming in a pool of talent (pardon my humour). As the picture started going viral, it got us hooked with never seen on-set photos, with more neon blue Pandora adventures to come.
“From the set of the sequels: @ZoeSaldana, Sam Worthington, Kate Winslet, and Cliff Curtis taking a break from underwater performance capture for a quick photo,” the caption reads.
“Fun fact: Much of the performance capture took place in this 900,000 gallon tank, built specifically for the sequels.”
James Cameron's 2009 sci-fi sequel signed Winslet back in 2017. Earlier, Cameron revealed her character Ronal recognized as sea people living on the moon Pandora. "She was really excited about doing the water work and at her peak, I think she held her breath for seven-and-a-half minutes... during the training," Cameron said about Winslet last year. "She was regularly doing two-or-three minute scenes, underwater acting and swimming. She truly embraced the physicality of the character," he added.
According to reports, the Oscar-winner actress had to hold her breath underwater for seven minutes while shooting.
Producer Jon Landau told Collider: “We built a water tank that was 500,000 gallons of water, and we are doing performance-capture under the water, on the surface of the water, and above the water. We trained our cast to free-breath-hold, because in the sequences they have to just be swimming, they can’t be on scuba, and they have to be able to do long takes. So we had a gentleman named Kirk Krack come in and train everybody that needed to be underwater how to go underwater and how to hold their breath.”
Winslet and Cameron go way back to 1997 when their film Titanic broke all the records in the industry.
"Kate Winslet had to train in this and she got up to a static breath hold of just about seven minutes. It’s amazing, it’s mind over matter. You see Kate going underwater and she just felt so comfortable. There was one day, we have a tank where she was just rehearsing and testing and we have some windows into it, and I go in there and she’s just walking on the bottom left and right, left and right, left and right, then she sees me in the window and she just waves. I couldn’t believe it," Landau added.
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Avatar had remained the world’s highest-grossing movie for nearly ten years, so when the sequel was announced it meant a great deal for movie-lovers. Based on the pictures that have surfaced online, it looks like Neytiri (Saldana) and Jake (Worthington) would indulge in another adventure away from home on earth. Another on-set photo unveiled returning actors Sigourney Weaver and Joel David Moore. Although it is hard to guess any plotline beyond that, this time Avatar 2 characters are expected to spend a lot of time underwater in the mythical world where blue is the new black.
Reportedly, the film won’t be released until December 2021. The original Avatar film is the second highest-grossing film of all time, having raked in £2.25bn ($2.78bn) in the global box office. The production of the sequel was on temporary halt due to the coronavirus outbreak, but fans wouldn’t mind getting a sneak peek of the shooting scenes once in a while now, would we?
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Feature Image Credit: officialavatar/Twitter
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