Fans of the epic science fiction film 'Avatar' will now have to wait for the sequel to the 2009 blockbuster directed by the award-winning director James Cameron. Talking to the media at the shooting location in New Zealand, the production team recently said that originally they planned to release the movie in 2016, but now it appears that 'Avatar 2' will be released only sometime in 2017.

Associated Press reports that the 60-year-old director has put the onus of delaying the release of 'Avatar 2'on the strategy of making three films at the same time.

Explaining his view, Cameron said, "There's a layer of complexity in getting the story to work as a saga across three films that you don't get when you're making a stand-alone film." The director added, "We're writing three simultaneously. And we've done that so that everything tracks throughout the three films. We're not just going to do one and then make up another one and another one after that."

Earlier, people not only hailed Cameron's plans to film the all the three upcoming installments of this potentially lucrative franchise simultaneously, as it was considered to be an effective means to bring down expenses and also prevent the runaway expenses that affected the original movie. It has been claimed that the original movie cost a whipping $230 million! Nevertheless, now it seems that the director is facing problems making three movies at the same time.

The delay in releasing 'Avatar 2' notwithstanding, Cameron is still hopeful that he will be able to successfully complete the next three installments of the franchise. During the interview in New Zealand, Cameron said that he is expecting to complete writing the films by the end of January.

Meanwhile, Entertainment Weekly notes that the director had said something similar during a Reddit AMA in April 2014. The website says that still Cameron has plans to release the three movies at intervals of one year, which means that the fans will have something new every year till 2019.