Giovanni Ribisi

Giovanni Ribisi is set to reprise his role as Parker Selfridge in all four of James Cameron‘s upcoming ‘Avatar’ sequels.

… Hmmmm, wait a minute… Giovanni Ribisi was in ‘Avatar’?  Let’s see…

Oh, so I guess he played the bad guy.  Not the old dude with the muscles.  His boss.  Parker Selfridge was the stereotypical heartless corporate stooge the head administrator of the Resources Development Administration (the RDA) who were the folks behind the mining expeditions to Pandora.  They were looking for the rare mineral “unobtanium.”  (Guess they were all out of Ucantouchdisium.)

Ahem, all kidding aside, in the story, he originally planned to wipe out the Na’vi in order to get the… yeah, I can’t type that again… but when violence between the military forces and the Na’vi escalates, Selfridge starts to unravel.  I guess he didn’t realize his plan, also known as genocide, was going to entail so much bloodshed.

Cameron is currently shooting all four sequels at the same time.  This is an unprecedented project in its ambition.  The director described the process, saying:

“It’s not back-to-back. It’s really all one big production. It’s more the way you would shoot a miniseries. So we’ll be shooting across all [Avatar scripts] simultaneously. So Monday I might be doing a scene from Movie Four, and Tuesday I’m doing a scene from Movie One. … We’re working across, essentially, eight hours of story. It’s going to be a big challenge to keep it all fixed in our minds, exactly where we are, across that story arc at any given point. It’s going to be probably the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. I’m sure the actors will be challenged by that as well. It’s like, ‘No, no, no, no, this person hasn’t died yet, so you’re still in this phase of your life.’ It’s a saga.”

Once completed, Cameron plans to release them one at a time starting in December of 2020 with the second sequel (third film overall) following roughly a year later in 2021.  The films will skip 2022 and 2023 to return in 2024 and 2025.

Ribisi joins fellow alumni from the first ‘Avatar’ Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, CCH Pounder, Joel David Moore and Matt Gerald.  Joining them are newcomers Kate Winslet, Oona Chaplin, Cliff Curtis, Jamie Flatters, Jack Champion, Britain Dalton, Duane Evans Jr. and Trinity Bliss.

Ribisi can currently be seen on the Amazon series ‘Sneaky Pete’.  He also got super rich because a technology company he owns called Studio D did some of the 3D conversion work on the first ‘Avatar’.  So guess he was a shrewd businessman onscreen and off.

‘Avatar 2’ is scheduled to open on December 18, 2020, ‘Avatar 3’ on December 17, 2021, ‘Avatar 4’ on December 20, 2024, and ‘Avatar 5’ on December 19, 2025.

Sources: Deadline via /Film