Picture this scenario: you’re hired to work on the sequels to a major motion picture, one that’s become the highest grossing film of all time. The catch is, you don’t have a finished script to any of these movies, but you’ll be working with the creator of this universe, and with a ton of meticulous notes. For production designer Ben Procter and the rest of the team that worked on the Avatar sequels, that’s exactly how they started working on all of the planned sequels, almost a decade ago this summer.
I learned this pretty daunting story during an interview with Procter on behalf of celebrating the home release of Avatar: The Way of Water. As the wildly successful sequel is currently available on Digital, as well as 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD, I was able to speak with the man who specified himself as the “hard surface” production designer on what we both referred to as “The Sequels.”
