Before making his own Terminator sequel, writer-director James Cameron made a career out of directing sequels to other directors’ projects. The man who wrote Avatar, True Lies and Titanic began his career as the writer/director of Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, but he followed that up with the same work on Aliens, in addition to write the script for Rambo: First Blood. II. In fact, James Cameron wrote Aliens and Rambo: First Blood Part II at the same time.
Entertainment Weekly features James Cameron revealing how he was told on the same day that he had landed both the Aliens and the Rambo: First Blood Part II writing gigs. He decided to take both jobs, and came up with a unique solution on how to separate both projects. Here’s what James Cameron had to say below about taking both jobs.
“So I wound up getting two writing gigs the same day, one was Rambo: First Blood Part II and the other was Alien 2 . I had gone in on the meetings, and I wound up getting the phone calls the same morning. So, I took both jobs, and I had a three-month period to write Rambo and what became Aliens . So, what I did was I got a desk for each script. I put one in the bedroom and one in the living room, and that way, when I would move from one desk to the other, all the notes and papers and everything were right where they were supposed to be. So if, I didn’t know what to do next on Rambo , I’d go over here and work on Aliens for awhile.”
James Cameron also revealed that he was also working on a completely different story entitled Mother, which featured a scene where the hero is fighting “in something suspiciously like a power loader, against something suspiciously like an alien. The filmmaker also spoke about how quickly he churned out the lengthy treatment for Aliens.
“I wrote a treatment for them in probably two or three days. I think they were shocked when I came back three days later with with a 60 or 70 page treatment. I was basically just doing DNA splicing of a whole bunch of ideas that I had had, that were all riffs on the original Alien.
Both Aliens and Rambo 2 went on to become box office hits when they hit theaters. In 1986, Aliens earned $131.1–183.3 million, equivalent to today’s $198.7 million, and Rambo: First Blood Part II earned $300.4 million, equivalent to today’s $682 million adjusted film. for inflation.
It’s incredible that Cameron managed to write both sequels so quickly and at the same time. What’s even more impressive is that Aliens is one of the better sequels, and Rambo: First Blood Part II isn’t too bad either.