Hot on the heels of yesterday’s news that SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES writer Josh Friedman had been hired to work on the screenplay for James Cameron’s upcoming AVATAR sequels, the raving egomaniac (sorry, that should read ‘visionary’) director has announced that he’ll be making not two, but three trips back to Pandora.

Yes, despite the fact that nobody asked for them we’re set to get three whole sequels to AVATAR. Friedman will handle the screenplay for one of them, the RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES duo of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver another, and Shane Salerno, who previously worked on Cameron’s stuck in development hell FANTASTIC VOYAGE remake the third. (We submitted a screenplay for AVATAR 2 which consisted of 3 hours of the Na’vi swaying in front of a magic tree, but sadly it didn’t make the cut.)

Cameron announced to Deadline that: “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.”

The films, which Cameron will shoot simultaneously, will be released a year apart, starting in 2016 and concluding in 2018, a mere 11 years after the original came out.

Has the time for an AVATAR sequel (or three) passed? Would you prefer him to stop messing around and make a third TERMINATOR film? (contrary to popular belief there are only two TERMINATOR films. Any others you may think you’ve seen were merely bad dreams), or make good on his (not entirely serious) promise to direct PROMETHEUS 2? Or even the long mooted BATTLE ANGEL? Let us know below. We’re more than a little dubious that any more trips back to Pandora are necessary, but then everyone thought the original (the biggest box office hit in history) and TITANIC (previous biggest box office hit in history) were stupid ideas, so what do we know?

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