Avatar: The Way of Water nearly explored outer space

'Avatar: The Way of Water' nearly took Na-vi into outer space.

James Cameron's long awaited sequel hit the big screen this month with the characters going on a journey from the rainforest to the ocean, but screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver have revealed there was a pitch to boldly go even further.

Jaffa told Entertainment Weekly: "There was one idea of a space battle with Na'vi. That idea got a lot of traction, and we talked a lot about it. We were struggling, though. How would that work with the story that we're telling?

"Jim said, 'Well, give me a few weeks.' He went off and he wrote an entire script. And, by the way, a brilliant script."

Jaffa and Silver were part of Cameron's think tank - which was formed as far back as 2013 to develop the script for the sequel - with Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno, and despite the team liking the idea, it "didn't really work" with the overall story.

Jaffa added: "At the end of the day, the whole script got thrown out because it just didn't really work with the story we were telling."

It wasn't unusual for the writers' room to work on an idea like that to see if it would fit the story, with some being "minor" pitches they would "dial down on".

Silver explained: "The idea was six months in a writers' room, and that we were going to break down beat by beat three movies, which would describe a larger saga, but each movie would be distinct.

"We didn't know which movie we were gonna write. We were gonna be invested in all of them and each beat of each movie.

"Then come Christmas [of 2013], Jim would tell us which movie we had and send us off to write, and he would work on writing each of the scripts with us."