In early February, just as “Avatar” became the highest-grossing movie in U.S. box-office history, News Corp. top dog Rupert Murdoch announced that Fox had held “very early talks about” a sequel to James Cameron’s sci-fi love story. More than two weeks later, Cameron tells MTV News he’s still waiting to sort out those contractual details before committing to a return to the motion-captured world of Pandora.

“I’ve got some deal hurdles I got to get over with the studio before I want to emotionally embrace that,” the writer/director said.

Declining to elaborate about the specific obstacles — not compensation-related, he assured us — Cameron nonetheless said all parties involved expect a deal to be signed at some point down the road.

“[Sequel details have] never properly been worked out, let me put it that way,” he said. “But everyone’s highly motivated. Rupert Murdoch told us we were doing it, so now they have to make a deal.”

During the Wednesday interview, Cameron also confirmed what he’s been telling us since December: that the sequel will pick up after the events of the first film — spoiler alert! — when Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) permanently transfers his consciousness to his Na’vi avatar and begins a new life with Princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) after they defeat the human colonizers.

“It would be a continuation of their story and I expect that those nasty humans didn’t go away forever: ‘Oh, well that didn’t work!’ ” he said.

For now, though, Cameron adamantly refuses to say whether a second “Avatar” will be his next feature film project as a director. He’s got his hands in a number of other creative ventures and will soon jet off to Australia for work on “Sanctum,” a 3-D underwater cave-diving tale that he’s producing.

“I’m sort of reacquainting with a bunch of projects that are non-theatrical film projects, like space stuff and ocean stuff,” Cameron said. “But yeah, I’m thinking about what the next feature will be and another ‘Avatar’ film is a strong possibility.”

From MTV