IGN spoke with Avatar producer Jon Landau about the possibility of a sequel. Landau replied that an on-screen sequel to Avatar would depend on audience response, but that Cameron is planning to expand the world of Pandora on the page:

"Trying to condense our story into a 140-page screenplay, or two-and-a-half hours of screen time, is no easy task", Landau explained. "There are great ideas and themes and character journeys that we did not have the time to go on in the script or in the movie. I think Jim wants to take the opportunity to flesh those out and make them available to people."

Landau also said that the novel would not be prequel or a sequel, but would go beyond the scope of the movie.

Cameron's name has been attached to previous novelizations of his films along with other writers (although the novelization for his 1989 film The Abyss was credited solely to Orson Scott Card.) But given that Avatar has been his baby for the past decade, it'll be interesting to see if he'll be writing the Avatar novel himself and if it will truly be more than a novelization, stretching far beyond the scope of the film.

The Future of Avatar [IGN]

• David (Davy throughout most of the book) is 17 when he starts teleporting, and 19 when the book ends. In the movie, he goes from age 15 at first teleport, to 25 in the blink of an eye. So much for those formative years.
• There's a lot of clumsy dialogue in the book. It was Gould's first novel, which could account for some of it, but when Davy gets asked he doesn't want to dance with a hoochie mama at a college party, his response makes us cringe: "I feel foolish. You know what you're doing out there. I feel like a clumsy jerk. The contrast is painful. I'm shallow, I guess, but I don't want everybody to know just how shallow."
• Davy may be young in the novel, but he starts dating Millie who attends college in Oklahoma pretty easily, despite their age difference. In the movie, she's a childhood friend who dates the Flash Thompson jock-type asshole. Shades of Mary Jane and Spidey.
• When he needs to kill time in the book, Davy jumps to Disney World and hops on the attractions. Star Tours is his favorite. In the movie, Davy kills time by boning bar floozies, surfing, and having lunch on the head of the Sphinx.
• In the movie, David robs a series of banks and other locations to finance his free-wheeling lifestyle, but in the book he only robs one bank, which nets him close to a million dollars. He lives fairly frugally off of it, since he has close to 800k left near the end of the book.
• David lives in a sleek highrise in the movie, but in the book he has a fairly modest apartment tucked away in a ghetto. He's put in a secret closet to hide his money, and Gould perpetually mentions his "25 inch television." We're assuming that in 1992 that was considered "big."
• In the novel, David jumps to the Stanville Library during his first couple of teleports, but Davy continually returns here throughout the novel where it serves as his "safe" place that he'll revert back to when in danger.
• There are no jumpscars or miniature sonic booms when Davy teleports in the book, unlike the movie. In fact, he doesn't make a sound at all when he leaves. Millie videotapes him doing it, and they have to slow the tape down to frame by frame to even see anything happening. At that point, you can vaguely see through him and into wherever he's going to or coming from, but only for a single frame. Having said that, the visual effects of jumping in the movie were pretty damned awesome.
• He also doesn't carry his momentum with him when he teleports in the novel. In the movie, he'd stay fairly within the laws of physics and stay in motion, but the book nullifies that. In fact, he steps off of many ledges, plummets down, and will jump away just before hitting bottom without any ill effects.
• Davy is the only jumper in the novel, whereas in the movie we're shown at least three of them. Including one with much more skill than David has.
• In the movie a group of mysterious agents called Paladins are tracking the jumpers, but in the book it's just the NSA.
• In the movie the Paladins use devices called "tethers" that utilize electrical shocks and pulses to keep a jumper pinned down. In the novel, they try tranquilizer darts and homing harpoons.
• David's swank apartment is nice in the movie, but in the book once Davy is found out, he builds a remote hideaway in a rocky fortress of solitude in Texas. It's completely walled off and looks like a part of a rock formation.
• In the book, Millie trains Davy to jump to the emergency room whenever she says "Bang," in an effort to keep him from getting seriously hurt. He has to jump whenever she says it, even if he's naked or going to the bathroom. Talk about cruel tricks being played on you by your girlriend.
• In both the novel and the movie, Davy and David record "jumpsites" by physically visiting places. They can't just look at a photo and teleport until they've actually been to the place. David in the movie prefers acres of photos, but Davy uses racks of videotapes. Novel Davy can also spot a place using binoculars, and then immediately jump there.
• Davy's mom leaves in the book, just like in the movie, but it's only to get away from Davy's abusive father. Shortly after Davy reunites with her, she's blown up by a terrorist on a hijacked flight. Davy soon devotes all of his efforts to avenging her death.
• Novel Davy is much less of a pussy then Movie David, breaking terrorist's bones and dropping them off of ledges into a pit filled with water. However, he cries at the drop of a hat. Hayden-bot probably has no tear glands.
• I cannot fucking stand the covers of mass-market movie tie in paperback books. I know the marketing department wants people to go "Oooooh! Bruce Willis is on this cover! Bruce Willis must be in this book!" and buy it, but I can't stand movie covers on my books. I bought this in the lame-o Christensen on the Sphinx cover, but then found the older copy and traded it in later. Phew. How's that for trivia?
• If you enjoyed (or think you might enjoy) the novel Jumper, then check out Fade by Robert Cormier. It's about a boy who discovers he can turn himself invisible. Sweet!

After Hollywood passed on Interworld in 1996, Gaiman and Reaves decided to rework it as a novel. Alas, no one was interested in publishing it. However, they sent it out again in 2006, and it was purchased by HarperCollins and published last summer. And now the project has a new lease on life in Hollywood as well.

While Gaiman is probably best known for his comic book stint on The Sandman and his fantasy novels like Neverwhere, Reaves has written episodes of everything from Buck Rogers to Star Trek: The Next Generation to Sliders. Which comes in handy in Interworld, since the main character Joel finds out he can travel between alternate Earths. According to Gaiman it was,

An idea about a boy who finds himself in the middle of a war between two equally powerful forces, who joins a super-team consisting of versions of himself from different alternate realities to try and maintain the cosmic balance.

Oddly enough, Stephen King's alternate worlds novel The Talisman is being turned into a miniseries later this year by Dreamworks Television, which also involves a young boy who can "flip" between worlds, although the other places he goes are mired mostly in magic. One of the characters even states, "They have magic like we have science." We just hope that the slight similarities between the two stories don't force Dreamworks to shelve Interworld, because who wouldn't want to join their own superteam, made up of different versions of themselves?

In Saving Charlie, fans will discover why Hiro has gotten more action on the show than the hormonal Peter Petrelli. The plot features Hiro's missing six month time-travel adventure with Charlie the cute waitress, when he went into the past to try and save her from Sylar. While he ultimately had to let her die in one of those "it was meant to be" moments, they did fall in love.

The novel is being put out by Del Rey Publishing, and is written by Aury Wellington, who seems to be best-known for her novelizations of teen angst drama The O.C. . It also features one of the dullest book covers we've ever seen. But we're trying not to judge. We need our Heroes fix.

Directors ranging from Skip Wood to Bryan Singer have worked on a remake in various stages of pre-production since the mid 1990s, but it never gained enough traction to stay on the rails. Although it now seems like producer Joel Silver has found his team: director Joseph Kosinski and screenwriter Timothy Sexton (Children of Men).

While the hiring of Sexton is a shot in the arm, since Children of Men did such a great job with a post-apocalyptic future, Kosinski is a first-time feature film director, which could fall on the good or the bad side of the fence. Although if it couldn't get going with a name like Bryan Singer attached, then maybe this newcomer will breathe some much needed fresh air into the project. Although since the novel is part of a trilogy (with a fourth being a novelette, and another sequel in the works), you think they might hand these reins to someone with some experience.

However, if it means getting Logan's Run to the big screen all the sooner, we say hand a camera to just about anyone and let's get things rolling ... er, running. Although we wouldn't mind not having a repeat of the dreaded Logan's Run TV series from the 1970s. Yes, it really happened.

Logan's Run getting a remake thanks to Warner Bros. [Quiet Earth]