James Cameron has announced Avatar sequel will hit cinemas in 2020

This announcement came as a photo of the entire production team was posted on the film’s official Facebook page to mark the beginning of filming.

And he wrote: ‘Great to be working with the best team in the business! Avatar takes flight as we begin concurrent production on four sequels. The journey continues December 18 2020, December 17 2021, December 20 2024 and December 19, 2025.’

The movie Avatar was originally released in 2009 and holds the record for highest grossing film of all time after making an eye-watering $2.8 billion at the global box office.

With the latest release date comes only a year after Cameron previously announced that the first of four sequels would hit cinemas in 2018.

Also, he confirmed that Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver will all be returning for the sequels – which Cameron had originally envisaged as being only two films.

He said: ‘We have decided to embark on a truly massive cinematic project, making four epic films, each of which stands alone but together forms a complete saga.’ Describing the epic time-frame of production last month, he added: ‘I know where I’m going to be for the next eight years of my life.

‘It’s not an unreasonable time frame if you think about it. It took us four-and-a-half years to make one movie and now we’re making four. We’re full tilt boogie right now. This is my day job and pretty soon we’ll be 24/7.

‘We’re pretty well designed on all our creatures and sets. It’s pretty exciting stuff. I wish I could share with the world. But we have to preserve a certain amount of showmanship and we’re going to draw that curtain when the time is right.’