Avatar director James Cameron has announced that all three sequels will be filmed in New Zealand, explains that the stories will focus on family and debunks underwater rumors.

James Cameron has decided to film all three Avatar sequels in New Zealand, after first reporting that filming would take place in Los Angeles. In a recent interview with AP James Cameron says his vision for his three Avatar sequels is to create a family epic. While the first film was mostly about Jake, he says that won’t necessarily be the case in the next film.

He says, “It’s really the story of his family, the family that he creates on Pandora. His extended family. So think of it as a family saga like The Godfather.” It’s interesting that he chose The Godfather as inspiration, as it’s seen as a family that goes through many tragedies.

Cameron also discussed rumors about the first sequel, explaining that it won’t take place underwater like it was initially reported. A lot of this gained steam due to the fact that Cameron was spending a lot of time in submarines doing dozens of dives in the past year.

Cameron explains, “There’s a fair bit of underwater stuff. It’s been inaccurately said that the second film takes place underwater. That’s not true, there are underwater scenes and surface-water scenes having to do with indigenous ocean cultures that are distributed across the three films.”

This is essentially the first time we’re hearing about the story of the three Avatar sequels and it certainly changes what we thought the first sequel would be dealing with. He’s also said that they will be filmed over nine months and should cost less than $1 billion dollars. The first film came in at around $500 million.

He also went on to say, “It’s going to be a lot of new imagery and a lot of new environments and creatures across Pandora, we’re blowing it out all over the place. At first I thought I was going to take it onto other worlds as well, in the same solar system, but it turned out not to be necessary.”

The first Avatar was a massive success, pulling in $2.78 billion worldwide at the box office, and jump-started the current 3D madness (sigh). We imagine the only film that’s capable of knocking Avatar off its #1 spot is one of its sequels.

Avatar 2, written by War of the Worlds’ screenwriter Josh Friedman will be released December 2016. Avatar 3, penned by Rise of Planet of The Apes’ Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, will open December 2017. Avatar 4, with Shane Salerno on script duty, will arrive December 2018.