Now that James Cameron is living a life of luxury in his 2,500-acre property in New Zealand, it was a quick hop over to the premiere of the latest film from his friend Peter Jackson. During his time at last night’s debut of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the filmmaker opened up on his future projects, which are — as everyone in the world knows — back-to-back Avatar sequels. Since the first film bowed back in 2009 it’s been years of speculation on when we’ll actually see his follow-ups and we’ve now get confirmation on the timeline.

While praising Jackson for setting the stage for 48 frames per second technology (which, if accepted by audiences, he hopes to use in his Avatar sequels), he talked about when he’ll go back to life on Pandora. Speaking with The West Australian, the director says that while New Zealand is ”too damn distracting because it’s so beautiful,” he plans to finish both scripts by this February and then kick off production for the sequels by the end of 2013.

He admits that he doesn’t ”want to be writing the movie in post production,” as he did with the first Avatar, adding, “I ended up cutting out a lot of scenes and so on and I don’t want to do that again.” This timeline certainly throws out a 2014 release date, as producer Jon Landau indicated, but does keep things on track for a 2015 bow for the first film. As we wait (and wait) check out a batch of IMAX-exclusive posters for the film Cameron attended last night, The Hobbit. All four, featuring the main characters, come from SHH and they’ll be available at IMAX midnight screenings.

Are you looking forward to the next Avatar sequels?