James Cameron wants to move forward with Avatar 3 post Avatar 2 success: ‘We’ve begun a franchise…’

James Cameron’s Avatar The Way of Water has turned out to be a huge worldwide success, crossing one billion at the global box office within the span of 14 days. Now director James Cameron has revealed that he is confident that the collection will turn into a profit for the highly expensive sequel to the 2009 original, and this would make the way for Avatar 3 and the two consecutive sequels in the pipeline. (Also read: James Cameron says he cut 10 minutes’ gun violence in Avatar The Way of Water ‘to get rid of some of the ugliness’)

The first Avatar made almost $3 billion at the global box office. It still remains the highest grossing film of all time. The sequel, which released last month, went on to collect more than $1.5 billion worldwide, surpassing the collection of Tom Cruise’s Top: Gun Maverick to become the highest-grossing movie of 2022.

Talking on the subject of the future of the Avatar franchise, James Cameron said on this week’s episode of ‘Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?’: “It looks like with the momentum that the film has now that we’ll easily pass our break even in the next few days, so it looks like I can’t wiggle out of this and I’m gonna have to do these other sequels. I know what I’m going to be doing the next six or seven years. The point is we’re going to be okay. I’m sure that we’ll have a discussion soon with with the top folks at Disney about the game plan going forward for Avatar 3, which is already in the can – we’ve already captured and photographed the whole film, so we’re in extended post-production to do all that CG magic. And then Avatar 4 and 5 are both written. We even have some of ‘4’ in the can. We’ve begun a franchise at this point. We’ve begun a saga that can now play out over multiple films.”

James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water has released 13 years after the 2009 original film. The sequel follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) as they try and protect their kids from the return of the Skypeople and Colonel Quaritch (Steven Lang) who is hell-bent on revenge. The film also introduces a new water tribe of the Na’vi called the Metkayina. Hindustan Times’ review for the film said, “Avatar: The Way Of Water is a stunning spectacle that is mounted by a passionate filmmaker who knows exactly how to mould action and emotion together for an enjoyable time at the movies.”