Avatar: The Way of Water is one of the most anticipated movie releases of this year, set to arrive in theaters this December 16. James Cameron, the renowned director of the franchise, took 13 years to create this massive sequel to the 2009 Avatar movie. As a sequel to the record-holder for the highest-grossing film of all time, Avatar 2 is set to make another milestone.
The sequel cost $350 Million, and the franchise is set on making three more Avatar films in the future. Once completed, it will cost Disney a whopping $1 Billion investment in the production alone. This is nothing compared to the income that the first movie alone brought home – a massive $2.92 Billion and nine Oscar nominations.
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Avatar 2 Will Showcase The Richness Of The Flora And Fauna Of Pandora
Cameron has been very busy over the past few months wearing several hats. Avatar 2 will run for over three hours, and some parts of the movie require rigorous practice, like the underwater scenes. He oversees the visual effects, too, in which a movie as heavily reliant on computer graphics as Avatar would need about 3,350 visual effects shots.
The sequel will pick up several years later with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) having their own family and living in peace inside the planet of Pandora. As ancient threat starts to arise, they had to leave their safe haven and explore the uncharted regions of their home.
As a movie focused on the richness of the flora and fauna of Pandora, it is inevitable for Cameron to tackle environmental issues and sustainability. After the success of Avatar, the studio wanted an immediate follow-up, but the director was pretty much hesitant and distracted by his other passions. These hobbies include Cameron being the first to solo dive to the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth.
James Cameron On Climate Change And Coming Back To The Franchise
In his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cameron confessed that he was having second thoughts about coming back to the franchise because he was having so much fun. The director also said that many people are struggling with “nature deficit disorder” which basically means we do not engage with nature as much as we ought to.
His reason for coming back to the movie was to see the potential it holds to turn it into an instrument that would improve people’s relationship with nature.
“Avatar is the highest-grossing film, and it’s a movie that’s asking you to cry for a tree. You can’t hit environmental messaging over the head. People are angsty enough. We’ll be injecting this film into a marketplace in a different time. And maybe things that were over the horizon in 2009 are upon us now. Maybe it’s not entertainment anymore. We skipped from complete denial [of climate change] to fatalistic acceptance, and we missed the middle step.”
James Cameron also pointed out that a filmmaker’s role is not to add to the gloom of the situation but to “offer constructive solutions”. The director also revealed that the scripts for the future Avatar films have already been written.
Avatar: The Way of Water will arrive in theaters on December 16, 2022.
Source: THR
