What will happen if Avatar: Fire and Ash doesn’t make enough profits to convince Disney to finance Avatar 4 and 5? Producer James Cameron has said he is ready to depart from the franchise, adding that he will write a book to resolve an open thread about Avatar 3.
The special effects-heavy Avatar films cost vast amounts of money to produce, but they have historically made billions of dollars at the box office. With Avatar: Fire and Ash set to be released in December, she’s expected to do the same – and she’s under pressure to perform for Disney so that director James Cameron can realize his vision and release Avatar 4 and 5 over the next six years.
Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Cameron admitted that he was nervous about the box office performance of Avatar: Fire and Ash, and was conscious of “forces” working against a theatrical release in 2025.
There is a possibility of “sequelitis,” Cameron said. “Unless it’s the third Lord of the Rings film, people dismiss the sequels and you want to see what happens to everyone, which in my mind it is – it’s the culmination of a story, but the public can’t see it that way.”
And there’s the “one-two punch” of streaming and Covid, which means fewer people are going to the movies – 75% compared to 2019, Cameron suggested.
When pressed on how much Avatar: Fire and Ash cost to make, Cameron did not reveal a figure, but he sidestepped the issue by saying that it was a lot of money, and so the film would have to make a lot of money.
“That’s a metric ton of money, which means we have to make two metric tons of money to make a profit,” he said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that this movie will make money. The question is, does it make enough money to justify doing it again?”
And at that point, Cameron admitted that he was “absolutely” ready to walk away from Avatar if Fire and Ash flopped.
“I’ve been in Avatar land for 20 years,” he said. “Actually 30 years because I wrote it in ’95, but for those first 10 years I wasn’t working on it consistently. Yeah, sure, sure. If it ends up here, then great.”
But what about the open story thread?
“There’s an open thread. I’ll write a book!” Cameron replied.
Cameron would not want to hand the reins over to anyone else (“Absolutely not!”). “I have options there,” he explained. “There are levels that I dive into. I can produce it. I don’t think there will ever be a version where there’s another Avatar movie that I haven’t produced closely. But in terms of how I handle my life, it’s a boundary issue for me.”
Avatar 4 is scheduled to release on December 21, 2029, while Avatar 5 will be released on December 19, 2031. Cameron, now 71, will be nearly 80 by the time this is all over.
Avatar remains the highest-grossing film of all time (not adjusted for inflation), and has grossed an impressive $2.9 billion across multiple theatrical runs. (Avengers: Endgame briefly overtook Avatar, before Avatar took back its crown via a reworked release.) 2022 sequel Avatar: Path of Water Meanwhile, it grossed $2.3 billion, placing it as the third-highest-grossing film of all time – just ahead of Cameron’s own Titanic, which floated at $2.2 billion.
Can Avatar: Fire and Ashes come close to its predecessors? After the release of Avatar 2, the only film to cross the $2 billion mark at the box office was Ne Jha 2. It feels like the world is still a very different place just a few years after The Way of Water.
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Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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