Although you'd think he'd have his hands full with two Avatar sequels and various other movies in different stages of pre-production, it's now being reported that James Cameron is planning to write a prequel to his Na'vi tale, detailing the events that led up to the record-breaking movie. However this won't become a movie and will stay on the printed page in novel form.
The news came via the film's producer, Jon Landau, who told MTV that the book "would be something that would lead up to telling the story of the movie, but it would go into much more depth about all the stories that we didn't have time to deal with - like the schoolhouse and Sigourney [Weaver's character] teaching at the schoolhouse; Jake on Earth and his backstory and how he came here; [the death of] Tommy, Jake's brother; and Colonel Quaritch, how he ended up there and all that."
It would be Cameron's first time as a novelist, and suggests that rather than just sticking to films, the people behind Avatar are already thinking about creating an expanded universe, which goes beyond Jake and Pandora. Landau added, "There might be opportunities in publishing to tell some of the backstory, tell some of the Earth war stories, what went on in Jake's life before the movie. And we'd have that lead up to the sequel that might take place on Pandora several years after our movie closed."
The likes of Star Wars and Star Trek have had great success going beyond TV and film and onto various other platforms, where they've massive expanded their worlds (and made a lot of money in the process).
Apparently Cameron's book could be in shops as early as Christmas, although don't hold your breath for it to be a literary masterpiece, because his dialogue is probably the weakest part of his movies, so there's little reason to think he'd be better at prose.