James Cameron has spent the last 30 years laughing in the face of his doubters and detractors, to the extent that nobody’s going to be surprised in the slightest if Avatar: The Way of Water ends up with the filmmaker landing the mind-blowing distinction of directing the highest-grossing movie in the history of cinema for a third time. But what happens if it underperforms?
The reputation of the opening installment took a largely unwarranted nosedive in the 13 years since its release, but we can’t overlook the fact that almost as soon as Avengers: Endgame dislodged Avatar at the top of the all-time box office charts, a re-release saw it recapture the top spot. Not only that, but the sci-fi epic’s most recent return to theaters swelled the coffers even further, and it’s now less than $80 million away from becoming the first project to ever reach $3 billion in theatrical takings.
The Way of Water is only a few weeks away, and principal photography on the third installment is already finished, but so far the fourth and fifth adventures on Pandora aren’t 100 percent set in stone. That’s clearly by design, after Cameron revealed in the latest issue of Total Film magazine that he’s holding back in case he needs to break the emergency glass and abandon ship.
“The market could be telling us we’re done in three months, or we might be semi-done, meaning: ‘Okay, let’s complete the story within movie three, and not go on endlessly,’ if it’s just not profitable … We’re in a different world now than we were when I wrote this stuff, even. It’s the one-two punch – the pandemic and streaming. Or, conversely, maybe we’ll remind people what going to the theater is all about. This film definitely does that. The question is: how many people give a sh*t now?”
So, if The Way of Water doesn’t deliver on expectations, Cameron isn’t opposed to the idea of simply ending the franchise after Avatar 3. Of course, he’s been predicted to fail several times in the past and we all know how that turned out in the end, so we’ve got the sneaking suspicion he’ll be just fine.
