The follow-up to James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar, the highest-grossing movie of all time, transports viewers to the breathtakingly stunning planet of Pandora. There are big expectations for Avatar: The Way of Water, which is expected to cost more than $350 million and arrives 13 years after the original Avatar, which brought in $2.9 billion globally. There are also plans for further Avatar films.
“It’s a relief. We’ve been sitting on this egg for a long time and getting it out in front of people, the response has been overwhelmingly good so far,” Cameron said in an interview.
The Way of Water revisits the protagonists Jake Sully and Neytiri, now parents of five kids, more than ten years after the events of the first book, where Pandora’s blue Na’vi people fought human colonists for control of the moon’s natural resources.
The “Sky People,” as the Na’vi refer to humans, have returned and are hunting Sully, disrupting their tranquil existence in the paradise-like forest. Sully, Neytiri, and their kids fled to a remote location in search of safety with the maritime Metkayina tribe. To live in the face of their enemy’s impending threat, they must swiftly master the ways of the sea.
Asked if he was concerned the 13-year gap might hurt interest, Cameron said: “That was a very legitimate concern, I didn’t feel that instinctively but it was always a possibility. Then we dropped our first teaser trailer in May and it had 148 million views in 24 hours. I’m not worried about it anymore.”
“What does worry me is that the market has contracted due to the double punch of streaming and the pandemic, it’s slowly coming back. So can we be profitable in a changed market? … We’ll know in a few weeks, I guess.”
The shamanic matriarch of the Metkayina clan is portrayed by Kate Winslet in the new film, which will begin its global cinema release on December 14. This marks a reunion for Cameron and his Titanic co-star.
“With Titanic, when you’re flooding sets…you just never knew if there was going to be a chair sliding past your face or someone was going to get bumped by a table or a floating cushion,” she said.
“With Avatar, everything is completely planned. The safety has to obviously be in place because you are performing underwater 20 feet down and you have to be very respectful and calm so that everything works in a clockwork manner.”
