Avatar fans can look forward to a fourth film after all, with James Cameron revealing that the third sequel in the 3D extravaganza will actually take the form of a prequel.

Only last week producer Jon Landau claimed that he and Cameron would be working on the next two films back to back, but suggested that there were no plans for a fourth episode. Clearly, that has now changed.

"I haven’t really put pen to paper on it, but basically it goes back to the early expeditions of Pandora, and kind of what went wrong with the humans and the Na’vi and what that was like to be an explorer and living in that world."

"In the first film, we’re dropping into a process that’s 35 years in to a whole colonisation," he continues. "That will complete an arc and if that leads into more, we’ll start, not imitating Star Wars, but it’s a logical thing to do because we’ll have completed the thematic arc by the end of three."

"The only thing left to do is go back to see what it was like on those first expeditions and create some new characters that then become legacy characters in later films. It’s a plan."

Source: Press Release