According to James Cameron, the Avatar sequels were such a massive undertaking that he divided the three scripts between the writing team of Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno. Cameron delves further explaining the story process: "I think we met for seven months and we white boarded out every scene in every film together, and I didn't assign each writer which film they were going to work on until the last day. I knew if I assigned them their scripts ahead of time, they'd tune out every time we were talking about the other movie."
Speaking with the French news outlet 20 Minutes (via Culture Crave), James Cameron revealed the third film will introduce a villainous group of Na'vi called the Ash People. "I want to reveal the Na'vi from another angle because [so far] I have only shown their good sides. In the early films, there are very negative human examples and very positive Na'vi examples. In Avatar 3, we'll do the reverse."
James Cameron has openly confirmed that he is seriously looking into shooting the film in higher frame rate which, as he stated, takes the glass out of the window to reality. Possible frame rates of interest are 48fps or even 60fps. This would imply that either a downgraded version would be required for release in the majority of theaters across the world or this movie would be a pioneer in the attempts to get HFR into cinemas worldwide.
James Cameron was prepared to end the Avatar series after this film, if "The Way of Water" wasn't profitable, "The question is: how many people give a sh-t now?" he stated.
According to James Cameron, the movie's title wasn't chosen lightly; it took time to find one that truly encapsulated the essence of the film. As for why it was fitting, the director laid out a "cycle" that might make fans nervous over what's to come: "it took a long time to come up with a title that I felt resonated with what's in the film. I don't think I could say too much about it until you actually see the film and you see what it means, but if you think of fire as hatred, anger, violence, that sort of thing, and ash is the aftermath. So what's the aftermath? Grief, loss, right? And then what does that cause in the future? More violence, more anger, more hatred. It's a vicious cycle. So that's the thinking."