The Avatar sequels are starting to feel more real
EW recently had a chance to sit down and talk to Cameron about how long it took for the Avatar sequels to gain traction. “Kind of crazy” was how Cameron described the ordeal, although that probably doesn’t capture just how much of a roller coaster ride it must have been for the award-winning director. Don’t forget, Avatar 2 was already being planned as early as 2012 with at least three more Avatar films also on the way. What’s weird about the entire situation is that the Avatar sequels have long had the financial green light, with reportedly $1 billion set aside for the production of each Avatar sequel, which comes out to around $250 million a movie. Having said that, the highlight of the EW interview with James Cameron has to be the new photos from the Avatar sequels. Cameron also revealed to EW that Avatar 2 and 3 is his way of combining his “two greatest loves”, which are ocean exploration and feature filmmaking. Unfortunately, Cameron stopped short of revealing more details about the Avatar sequel. If it’s any consolation, we do know that Avatar 2 has already finished filming for over a year now with Avatar 3 coming close to completion. The former was even scheduled to arrive this December 17, but it has since been pushed back to December 16, 2022, with Avatar 3 slated for December 20, 2024, and Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 scheduled for December 2026 and December 2028, respectively. Avatar remains the highest-grossing single movie ever. It has a worldwide total of $2.8 billion, which is just a smidge above 2019’s Avengers: Endgame and a little less than a billion more than what Cameron’s other blockbuster film, 1997’s Titanic, made. If Cameron can find a way to catch lightning in a bottle multiple times, the Avatar franchise could end up becoming the most profitable series of films of all time. In other news, the Avatar movies aren’t the only ones exploring the same IP. We learned earlier this year that Ubisoft is working on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which is described as a video game that’s all about “world discovery and nature.”
