James Cameron revealed on Saturday that the three Avatar sequels are currently in preproduction as the scripts are finished.
The director took to Reddit for an AMA, where he wrote that progress was being made on the next Avatar films. The scripts for the second, third and fourth films will be completed over the next six weeks.
He noted that the films are "essentially all in preproduction now, because we are designing creatures, settings, and characters that span all three films." Cameron added that the most difficult part of the writing process has been removing "things I love" in order to achieve a reasonable runtime for the film.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, he was asked about a possible appearance of action star Arnold Schwarzenegger in any of the three upcoming films and he answered he didn't "see a role ... that would be appropriate for him, so I would say probably not."
The three films are currently slated to hit theaters in 2016, 2017 and 2018 with the three stars from the first, Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Stephen Lang, set to return for at least the first sequel.
Cameron admitted that any work on an adaptation of the graphic novel Battle Angel was "on hold" until everything was finished on the Avatar sequels.