Oscar winning producer behind the Avatar films, Jon Landau, has reportedly passed away after a battle against cancer at the age of 63, according to TheWrap.
UPDATE 7/7/2024:
- After the news of Landau’s passing spread through Hollywood and the industry, many friends and colleagues took to social media to share their memories.
Originally Reported:
- TheWrap is reporting that Jon Landau, the Oscar-winning film producer who collaborated with James Cameron on several projects including Titanic and the Avatar films, has died after a battle against cancer, according to a source close to the family, at the age of 63.
- Landau served as executive vice president of feature film production at Twentieth Century Fox throughout the 90s, but is best known as the producer of the 1997 blockbuster film “Titanic,” for which he won an Academy Award.
- He was also the producer of the Avatar franchise alongside James Cameron, serving as the steward expanding that franchise and having been signed on for the many planned sequels.
- Aside from being producer on the Avatar films, now owned by the Walt Disney Company, Disney fans might recognize him from his efforts collaborating with the themed land at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Pandora: The World of Avatar. As part of the storyline for that park’s Avatar expansion, Landau himself played Alpha Centauri Expeditions founder Marshall Lamm.
- He recently shared on social media of a visit to Walt Disney Imagineering to “talk about the future” as rumors started to fly before Disney CEO Bob Iger himself confirmed that an Avatar-based experience would be coming to the Disneyland Resort.
- Landau was also the COO of Cameron’s production company, Lightstorm Entertainment. The first of four planned Avatar sequels finally hit theaters in 2022, and Landau was onboard to produce all four sequels, with Avatar 3 and parts of Avatar 4 already finished and Avatar 5 yet to be filmed.