AVATAR UNIVERSE EXPANDS TO THREE SEQUELS: James Cameron Hires Writers to Collaborate with Him on the Films.

Marking a significant expansion of his already ambitious plans for the much-anticipated AVATAR sequels, Academy Award®-winning filmmaker James Cameron announced that the films have grown in number from two to three.

Additionally, to help bring his growing AVATAR universe to life and to expedite the process, Cameron has hired screenwriters Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds), Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (Rise of the Planets of the Apes), and Shane Salerno (Savages, Salinger) to collaborate with him on the screenplays for the three films.

The three pictures will be filmed simultaneously with production beginning next year.  The release of the first sequel will be in December 2016, with the second to follow in December 2017, and the third a year later. AVATAR 2, 3, and 4 will be produced by Cameron and Jon Landau through their Lightstorm Entertainment banner. Like the original film, Lightstorm will work with Joe Letteri and his team at WETA Digital to realize the worlds of the sequels.

Commented Cameron:  “Building upon the world we created with AVATAR has been a rare and incredibly rewarding experience.  In writing the new films, I’ve come to realize that AVATAR’s world, story and characters have become even richer than I anticipated, and it became apparent that two films would not be enough to capture everything I wanted to put on screen. And to help me continue to expand this universe, I’m pleased to bring aboard Amanda, Rick, Shane and Josh -- all writers I’ve long admired -­ to join me in completing the films screenplays.”

Commented 20th Century Fox chairman and CEO, Jim Gianopulos: “We at the studio have no higher priority, and can feel no greater joy, than enabling Jim to continue and expand his vision of the world of AVATAR. The growing breadth and scale of Jim Cameron’s plans for his magnificent fantasy worlds continue to amaze us all.”

AVATAR is the highest grossing film of all time, and is also the top-selling Blu-ray disc of all time. The film won Golden Globe® awards for Best Motion Picture and Best Director; and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won Oscars for art direction, visual effects and cinematography.

AVATAR was written by Cameron from an idea he nurtured for over a decade, while working on the technology necessary to realize its wholly imagined world. Working with WETA Digital, Cameron created a fully immersive 3D cinematic experience of a new kind, where revolutionary technology that was invented to make the film disappeared into the emotion of the characters and the epic nature of the story.

The three AVATAR sequels will mark Cameron’s latest collaborations with 20th Century Fox, a relationship that spans nearly 30 years and marks one of the most successful filmmaker-studio alliances in motion picture history. Cameron and Fox first joined forces in 1985 for Aliens, which became a sci-fi classic. Next came The Abyss, which revolutionized visual effects technology; then came the blockbuster, True Lies. In 1996, Fox greenlighted Cameron’s Titanic, which became the most successful film in history, and won a record-breaking eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

‘Chloë Grace Moretz’ Hit Girl is back in Kick-Ass 2

Kick-Ass wouldn’t be half the hero he is without Hit Girl, and no sequel would begin production without her in the mix. Imagined by Award winning writer Mark Millar as a tribute to his eldest daughter, Hit Girl has struck a chord with readers since her introduction and grown exponentially in popularity. The young woman who brought her to life, Chloë Grace Moretz, has been working up a storm—earning critical acclaim in such fare as Let Me In, as well as working with the likes of Martin Scorsese in Hugo and Tim Burton in Dark Shadows and soon to be seen starring opposite Julianne Moore as the title character in the remake of Carrie. Like her co-stars, she was thrilled to step back into her Kick-Ass role as Hit Girl, unfazed by the commotion caused by her appearance the first time around.

"The obvious difference is that I'm older now, and the difference between 11 and 15, which is how old I was when we finished, is that you're a different person, obviously," Executive Producer Neal H. Moretz reveals. "You're calculating more ideas, you're experiencing more things in your own life, you're not just living through other people's eyes, you're making your own decisions."

For the 2010 film, the now 16-year-old actress took the world by roundhouse kick with not only her acting abilities, but her phenomenal mastery of weaponry and martial arts. Indeed, Moretz didn’t know she was prescient when she joked at the premiere of the first film that she wanted to ride a purple Ducati: Hit Girl’s bike of choice in Kick-Ass 2. Laughs Moretz: “To get in the costume again and do all the stunts was pretty amazing.  I’ve had such a great time reliving the character and bringing in more dimensions, while taking an older approach to the role.  I liked seeing what I could play within the part.”

We meet a now-orphaned 9^th grader in Kick-Ass 2, a girl who is more terrified of the treacherous girls in school than she ever was of the villains that she and Big Daddy took down. Moretz describes where we meet Mindy: “She’s skipping school, still being a vigilante and caring more about Hit Girl’s life than Mindy’s. Because she doesn’t have Big Daddy anymore, and Marcus is much more of a normal parent than Big Daddy, she starts to question herself. She promises Marcus she’ll stop being Hit Girl and begins to figure out her life a bit. The thing is…Mindy can’t really change.”

Mindy McCready's life also comes as a direct response to the previous one (also known as 2010's "Kick-Ass"), and that chapter doesn't read the same way this time around.

"Here's this little girl who is basically raised to be an assassin by this man who is insane," director Jeff Wadlow explains. "I mean, Big Daddy is treated like a hero in the first film, but in our film we even take a step back and say, no, he loves his daughter and that's a good thing, but he was totally crazy and he robbed her of any kind of normal life. We try to deal with that in a very real way."

"What Jeff and I really wanted to improve was the real heart of it," says Moretz. "Because I wanted to show that this girl didn't have a father anymore and how much that affected her. She's really confused and going through the self-torture of, 'Am I killing people because this is what I was raised to believe was a good thing, or am I just murdering people?'"

Moretz also promises that Hit-Girl's physicality will be different in the sequel, thanks to one big change: no guns. Well, mostly no guns.

"I wanted to show this darker side to her, and I also wanted to make the action a little bit different. So we basically scrapped the guns. I do use guns a little bit in the movie, but we basically do hand-to-hand combat and it's just a lot more hands-on."

Drawing on the source material, Director Jeff Wadlow and the producers were interested in exploring what happens when Mindy stops being Hit Girl and grapples with life and love as a high-school student. The director felt that no other performer but Moretz could possibly deliver that. He says: “There’s something incredibly special about Chloë that is hard to describe and quantify, but when you see her on screen you instantly understand. As a director, it was exciting for me to work with someone like her, because normally I like to dissect the character and intellectualize the story. Chloë just gets it immediately; she doesn’t need me to pontificate.”

Wadlow found that the usual manner of directing an actor wouldn’t work with Moretz. He proudly says: “Chloë understands how to create a moment in a way that you can’t teach or talk about it. She just does it, and she does it every take. It’s funny because we’d talk about a scene, about where I wanted it to go or how it fits into the larger story, and sometimes I’d wonder if what I was saying even made sense. But then we’d shoot it, and Chloë would deliver—take after take. I don’t think of her as a kid at all. I talk to her as a peer because she is so incredibly savvy and mature, but also willing to be goofy and not at all self-conscious. She’s just an amazing actress.”

“Kick-Ass 2” is released and distributed by Universal Pictures and United International Pictures through Solar Entertainment Corp.

Steve Austin Gets Stone Cold ‘Maximum Conviction’ With Steven Seagal ‘Lawman’

Stone Cold Steve Austin pairs up with Steven Seagal ‘Lawman’ for some Maximum Conviction, and the new official trailer has hit from Anchor Bay. You can check it out below along with plenty of even newer images. While he waiting for new contestants for next season’s Redneck Island, Stone Cold Steve Austin has joined up with Steven Seagal ‘Lawman’ to fight off an elite team of mercenaries, and get to know two female prisoners who have a few secrets he’s like to uncover with Maximum Conviction.

The two Steve’s are working every muscle in their bodies in this one, and maybe it’ll get Sylvester Stallone’s attention for Expendables 3, but at least fans of the two will get some fun action from the men. You can pre-order this one for blu-ray/dvd combo action.    

When former black ops operative Tom Steele (Steven Seagal) and his partner Manning (Steve Austin) are assigned to decommission an old prison, they must oversee the arrival of two mysterious female prisoners. Before long, an elite force of mercenaries assault the prison in search of the new arrivals. As the true identities of the women are revealed, Steele realizes he’s caught in the middle of something far bigger than he had imagined. Fists will fly and bones will shatter as the situation escalates with every passing minute.

'Maximum Conviction' is released and distributed by Crystal Sky Multimedia.Showing on August 14. Nationwide!