James Cameron says 'Avatar 2' will be much cheaper than first movie

The "Avatar" sequels aren't going to be as insanely expensive as the first movie, which cost over $240 million, according to director James Cameron.

The three sequels - set to be released in the December's of 2016, 2017 and 2018 - are being shot simultaneously, saving costs thanks to the "economies of scale," Cameron said at a Wall Street Journal Conference on Wednesday, Design & Trends reports, citing the Hollywood Reporter.

"We'll literally capture the actors all at the same time, we'll do all the live photography all at the same time, it's sort of like we're shooting a miniseries," Cameron explained. "So, theoretically, that's a good way to damp the costs down hopefully well below what the first film cost."

It's easy to shoot everything at once when everything is computer generated, Cameron said, adding that their CGI system is even more advanced now than it was for the first film.

"The thing that's still astonishing to me is how well our prototype system did work," he said. "But it was not user-friendly at all and it was a lot of unnecessary hard work, and we just always kept consoling ourselves while we were making the film that we'll fix it for the sequel."

"Interestingly, the term 'filming' is so obsolete in almost every regard because we do some image capture where there's actual photography, but it's done entirely on digital cameras," Cameron continued. "And that only represents a small part, maybe 20 to 25 percent, of the total film. The rest is completely synthetically generated."

When asked about the new head-mounted gaming system Oculus Rift, which is being heralded as the next "big thing" in the virtual reality world, Cameron was surprisingly dismissive, saying, "There seems to be a lot of excitement around something that, to me, is a yawn, frankly... What will the level of interactivity with the user be other than just 'I can stand and look around. If you want to move through a virtual reality it's called a video game, it's been around forever."