“You’ve got to grow a very tough, rough skin as you’re trying to remain open.”

I texted him to say, “We’re so excited. Is there anything you want us to take a look at before we get started?” That’s when he sent me this long email with a link at the bottom to Pandorapedia (a Wikipedia-style website for Avatar lore). I just hit print. And it just kept going and going and going. That was just the beginning. He had us read a lot of books, see a lot of movies, look at some art. He’d been making notes on it since high school. And he sat us all down [including fellow writers Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno] and walked us through his ideas and notes for characters and story points, plot twists and so forth. And we just sat there for the first few weeks and went to Avatar graduate school.

JAFFA We sent him the pages [we’d written so far] and he was very excited and very complimentary, but he said, “I’m worried that we’re going to be long.” And so I said, “We are, too. Do you want us to go back and edit these pages or keep going?” And then we got an email back. It just said, “Take the hill.” So, we kept going.

SILVER We knew it was too long. JAFFA There were attempts to edit it down to one movie. And then Jim came to us and said, “Look, we’re going to make it two movies.”

Did you have to turn down work or put your life on hold when word came that you’d be adding another Avatar to your plate?

JAFFA It didn’t change our lives

How far out are you plotting these movies?

JAFFA With Kingdom, we really feel like we’ve set the foundation for at least two more movies with these characters. But we’ll see. A lot of it depends on the audience’s reaction, too.

SILVER When you first came up with this idea, the Apes franchise way back, you saw nine movies. We thought, “This is crazy ambitious.” But here we are. We’re at four.

JAFFA I saw nine. I don’t know if we’ll make it to nine. I would love it. We’ve spoken to not just Wes and Josh and [producer] Joe Hartwick Jr., but to Steve Asbell and Scott Aversano at 20th about what these next movies can be.

SILVER It’s really interesting to be working on a franchise which is

SILVER Try to make the stories as personal as possible, rather than trying to contort yourself into what the market wants.

JAFFA The key is to get your material in front of people who are actually in a position to move scripts along and help you get started. If you’ve got something to say, then I think eventually you’ll get on track.

As producers on Apes, you had more power. Has that made you want to step behind the camera to direct?

SILVER (Pause.) What do you think? Maybe?

JAFFA Yeah, we’d consider it. I think it has to be the right material at this point. Certainly, we’ve thought about it.