As Avatar approaches Titanic’s $600 million box office, James Cameron continues to talk sequel. Not every box office hit calls for a second film, but Avatar is particularly apt for the sequel treatment and Cameron has known it all along.

He told E!, “We always planned on continuing the world and continuing the characters." The key word here is ‘continuing’ for two reasons. First of all, building upon elements already established means a smaller budget. Cameron explained, “We're going to spend a lot of money building this world and all these digital characters and digital plants and trees and mountains and so on, and then once we've got it, we've got it. It's not like it's a practical set that when you build it, you have to tear it down and you're left with a big pile of lumber out behind the studio. We have all that stuff so we can go again.” Secondly, this hints that Avatar 2 will not venture off of Pandora as previously suggested.

It’s difficult to speculate because, of course, Cameron hasn’t even come up with a story yet! "We just have to come up with a great story, which we haven't done yet." He continued, "I have a rough story, but you need to make a script, so that might take some time. Don't start going to buy your tickets." Considering how long it took Cameron to get the first film up and running, I’d take his word for it. At least this time around we’ll know it’ll be worth the wait.