Since the first success of Avatar, director James Cameron hasn’t been able to stop talking about his future installments of the series. Now it looks like he’s clearing up a few rumors about his films to come. Cameron, who vowed to only focus on the Avatar films, has said that he wants to create a trilogy in the same vein of The Godfather films.

Now he’s revealing what those installments may look like and explore. The sequel is said to go further into the moon Pandora, and explore the cultures that make up the fictional setting. In order to capture new and exciting landscapes, Cameron revealed that he plans to shoot the sequels in New Zealand, which is also where he shot the original.

The sequel to Avatar is planned for a 2016 release, and if you’re counting that’s a whole seven years after the original film was released into theaters. No one should really be surprised about the gap in time between films as Cameron invests all of his time and effort into his films, which are usually years and years apart.

Explaining what’s in store for the sequels, Cameron said:

“It’s going to be a lot of new imagery and a lot of new environments and creatures across Pandora. We’re blowing it out all over the place. At first I thought I was going to take it onto other worlds as well, in the same solar system, but it turned out not to be necessary. I mean the Pandora that we have imagined will be a fantasy land that is going to occupy people for decades to come, the way I see it.”

In terms of cultures to explore, the Avatar sequels will explore not only the Pandora creatures, but also the Na’vi cultures. Cameron said, “There are underwater scenes and surface-water scenes having to do with indigenous ocean cultures that are distributed across the three films.”

While the first Avatar film focused on the character of Jake Sully played by Sam Worthington, this one will be more centralized on all of the characters in the Avatar world. “It’s really the story of his family, the family that he creates on Pandora. His extended family. So think of it as a family saga like ‘The Godfather.’”

Are you excited to see what James Cameron has in store for the Avatar sequels?