Actress Says She’ll Sign On To James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ Sequels, Sight Unseen
In the past two years Zoe Saldana has become a force to be reckoned with in more ways than one: she helped J.J. Abrams resuscitate the “Star Trek” franchise as the lone female in the film’s boys’ club, commanded the screen as the literal warrior princess Neytiri in James Cameron’s blockbuster game changer, ”Avatar,” and now takes center stage as an ass-kicking assassin in “Colombiana,” due Friday. Two of the three films already have sequels in the works – “Star Trek” is scheduled to start shooting later this year, and Cameron promised two more “Avatar” films arriving in 2014 and 2015. But speaking to the press on Wednesday, Saldana indicated she wouldn’t mind if her latest film became the next in her growing series of franchises.
“We were in Cannes doing press earlier this year, and I go to meet them for dinner and [director] Olivier [Megaton] and Luc [Besson] are like in a corner [talking to one another],” Saldana remembered. “I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ And they were like, ‘If the movie does well, what about a sequel?’ And I was like, ‘Hell yes!’ So of course I would love to do it – if it’s well-received, of course.”
Meanwhile, Saldana said that Cameron seems enthusiastic about the forthcoming “Avatar” sequels, but is holding off presenting her and her castmates with a script until it’s finalized. “The last time I saw him was a couple of months ago for dinner,” she revealed. “He seems super excited. And I think he’s much more concerned to have Sigourney [Weaver], Sam [Worthington] and I to read it once it’s done, because he wants to hear our thoughts.”
Saldana indicated she’s ready to give the sequels a greenlight sight unseen. “I already know that I’m going to love it,” she said. “It’s going to be beautiful, and it’s going to be great, but he’s excited. He just wants to get the script to where it needs to be before he can say, ‘okay, this is worthy of shooting’.”
Up next for Saldana is a dramatic thriller “The Words,” in which she stars opposite Bradley Cooper. Although she’s enjoying a variety of opportunities now, Saldana insists that she mainly appreciates these sequel and franchise projects because they mean she’ll get to continue acting for the foreseeable future. “It just lets you know that if I’m alive in the next five years I can continue working,” she demurred. “But [sequels] can always be ill-received and then you’re back to square one.”
“That’s one of the things about this business – you can be in three franchises and then after they come out, it’s up and down,” she continued. “You never know, and that’s why you never take for granted anything in this business.”
But for now, the future looks very bright for Saldana. “Colombiana” opens this Friday.
