James Cameron plans to make two further instalments to the Avatar franchise.

The award-winning filmmaker - who has just released his first movie in 12 years - plans to turn the alien love story into a trilogy, but hasn’t developed the screenplays yet. “I have a trilogy-scaled arc of story right now, but I haven’t really put any serious work into writing a script,” Cameron said.

James said he hopes the next two films will take a little less time to make, however, because Avatar was in production for four years.

“My next goal is to refine the technique, make it easier so it doesn’t take as long. We were doing a lot of pioneering work on Avatar. It wouldn’t have taken as long if we already knew exactly how to do it,” James explained.

The new movie - starring Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana - used revolutionary production techniques and CGI technology, which is why the process took so long. “Part of what we set out to do is create a world and create these characters,” he told MTV. “From the time we capture and finish the capture, it’s literally nine to ten months to get the CG characters working, to get their facial musculature working.”