A follow-up to 2009’s ‘Avatar,’ which went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ will now “easily” break even at the box office, according to writer and director James Cameron.
Cameron raised eyebrows before the film’s release when he said ‘Avatar 2’ would need to “be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history” just to “break even.”
As of Sunday evening, just 24 days after its release, ‘The Way of Water’ has become the seventh highest-grossing picture of all time.
The worldwide box office total now sits just north of $1.7 billion – $516 million domestic and nearly $1.2 billion international.
During an interview on “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?” Cameron stated, “It looks like with the momentum that the film has now that we’ll easily pass our break even in the next few days, so it looks like I can’t wiggle out of this and I’m gonna have to do these other sequels. I know what I’m going to be doing the next six or seven years.”
Cameron had already confirmed that ‘Avatar 3’ would hit theaters in the coming years regardless of the total take following the first sequel’s release. In fact, both ‘The Way of Water’ and ‘Avatar 3’ were filmed simultaneously.
Now, it appears both 4 and 5 are a go.
Cameron added, “The point is we’re going to be okay. I’m sure that we’ll have a discussion soon with the top folks at Disney about the game plan going forward for ‘Avatar 3,’ which is already in the can – we’ve already captured and photographed the whole film, so we’re in extended post-production to do all that CG magic. And then ‘Avatar 4’ and ‘5’ are both written. We even have some of ‘4’ in the can. We’ve begun a franchise at this point. We’ve begun a saga that can now play out over multiple films.”
The third installment in the franchise, currently slated for a December 2024 release, is set to feature the ‘Ash people’ of Pandora, a clan said not to be as kind as the ones introduced in the first two films.