James Cameron signed an agreement with Fox to direct two sequels to Avatar in October 2010, but the existence of an additional prequel was claimed by Roger Dean in a lawsuit filed against Cameron this June. Now we know the whole story — 20th Century Fox has revealed it will make three Avatar sequels, to be filmed simultaneously beginning in 2014.

James Cameron will co-author the scripts with three different sets of collaborators says Deadline.com:

Cameron has set War Of The Worlds scribe Josh Friedman to write one film; Rise Of Planet Of The Apes‘ Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver to write another; with the third to be written by Shane Salerno, who wrote and directed the upcoming documentary Salinger and who previously worked with Cameron on a remake of Fantastic Voyage at Fox. The writers will collaborate with Cameron separately and co-write three separate movies with him.

The first sequel will be released in December 2016, with the others following in December 2017 and 2018.