Well, it’s official. Whether the world is prepared for it or not, James Cameron and co. are going to start production on Avatar 2 this fall. Yep, you read that right, the on-again-off-again sequel(s) project will finally start coming to fruition, provided international calamity doesn’t strike our shores in the coming months.

Sigourney Weaver revealed the good news to The Hollywood Reporter, which caught her at a screening of The Assignment Monday night. “We’re starting!” she said excitedly. “We’re starting training, and we’re starting — hm, I probably can’t say anything. We will be actually shooting it by the fall.”

James Cameron himself recently said that he was finally ready for production on the sequel to begin, now that he’s finished planning out the following three that come after that. “They’re all being developed equally,” he said back in February, which at least means that the story arc that binds these next four films together will be thoroughly considered. And, really, since the man has created an entire universe himself, involving a wealth of material — a huge percentage of which never even made it into the first film — the bounds of the rest of Pandora’s story are practically endless. Along with Weaver, Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington have signed on to don their mo-cap suits once again, so we at least know that the sequel’s jumping-off point involves some familiar faces.

Given the famously drawn-out production schedule, plus the fact that there’s no way this movie will be ready by 2018, it’ll be quite a while until we can say “I see you” to our tall blue cat-people friends again. Good thing Disney’s already working on a solution to that in the meantime.