If Avatar: The Way Of Water doesn’t clear $2bn at the global box office, it’s going to struggle to break even.
James Cameron is firmly on the promotional trail for his new film, the upcoming Avatar: The Way Of Water, and he’s already serving up a headline or two as he considers what his new movie needs to do. The film, one of four sequels he’s planning to make to his original movie.
It’s in a conversation with GQ that Cameron has gone straight for the nub of the things, with his quartet of new movies said to be costing Disney – which inherited the project from Fox – around a billion dollars to make (assuming it goes through with all of the films). He describes the first of his new films as “very ‘clucking’ expensive to make”, and suggested too that the idea of giving the movie the greenlight “was the worst business case in movie history”.
Notwithstanding the fact that the original movie made nearly $3bn at the global box office, Cameron is very aware that he needs the sequel to do nearly as well. In fact, “you have to be the third of fourth highest-grossing film in history” to break even in this case, he tells the outlet.
The odds of that happening? Well, they’re not on the high side. But also, Cameron has been down this road before, and had his films written off. Cameron has also twice made the biggest grossing film in history. Much will hinge now on whether he can come close to doing that all over again.
The GQ interview can be found here.
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