The modern days are here, and in a surprising turn of events, it seems like the imminent success of a project like Avatar: The Way of Water can be timed and measured using unorthodox methods. No, we’re not talking about reviews or the Rotten Tomatoes score but an even more obscure yet more reliable measuring system: fanfiction.
Create a piece of media, and fans will write stories about it: this is a tale as old as time. Fanfiction has been around since the primordial times of the entertainment fanatic system, leading fans of a particular series, movie, or character to write their own stories revolving around that theme. This new genre of literacy popularity can be traced back to the times of Tumblr supremacy, after which it gathered an even larger ground and audience through popular fanfic websites like Fanfiction.net, Wattpad, and more specifically, Archive of our Own. And that’s precisely the website we used to gather data for the possible box office drop that might be happening in the imminent future for the newest Avatar installment.
Earlier this week, director James Cameron came forward with the impressive height he aims to reach with Avatar: The Way of Water. He admitted that he would need to make a profit of, at least, two billion dollars to compensate for the production cost of the movie. However, as it would seem, not many fans are all that excited about the prospect of an Avatar franchise.
On the popular fanfiction-based website Archive of Our Own, Avatar has just 332 works under its belt. It may seem like a decent amount to some, but when compared to other popular franchises, it is evident that the sci-fi series hasn’t exactly managed to tickle the imagination of movie lovers. As per the information on “Ao3”, as it is popularly referred to, Harry Potter alone has 380,000 stories written about the series. On a similar note, Star Wars has about 209,168 fanfics about the sci-fi story. It is fair to say that neither the Na’vi nor their alluring planet Pandora has been enough to get the creative gears of its fans going.
Surprisingly enough, even Martin Scorcese’s legendary mafia movie ‘Goncharov’ has more fanfiction than Avatar, standing at around 428 stories. If you’re wondering why that might be surprising, well — it is because it doesn’t exist.
Although it is practically impossible to predict a movie’s success, especially in today’s cinema climate, 322 written and published works clearly point to a lacking je-ne-sais-quoi in the film — although the alleged Na’vi hair sex scene is more than exciting for all fanfic writers out there. After all, who wouldn’t want to write about intertwining Na’vi hair?
Regardless of the lackluster fanfics being written about Avatar, the 3-hour-long sequel will be hitting theatres on Dec.16. It may not surpass the 2.8 billion dollars it amassed with the 2009 original installment, but perhaps it may just lead to a future with more fanfiction to be on the horizon — Na’vi hair smut and all.
