Avatar was released way back in 2009, meaning 13 years will have passed by the time Avatar: The Way of Water arrives in theaters. There's a lot of excitement for the sequel, though we can't help but wonder whether the movie is coming too late.
After all, there are kids who are teenagers who weren't even born when the first instalment was released, while even fans of the franchise have moved on from Pandora in the years that have passed. Superhero movies are also vastly more popular now than they were in 2009 (a year after Iron Man was released), so is there still room for a potential blockbuster like Avatar: The Way of Water?
As you might expect, filmmaker James Cameron has had a similar thought process.
"I think I could have made a sequel two years later and have it bomb because people didn't relate to the characters or the direction of the film," Cameron tells The New York Times. "My personal experience goes like this: I made a sequel called Aliens, seven years after the first movie. It was very well received. I made a sequel called Terminator 2 seven years after the first movie. It did an order of magnitude of more, in revenue, than the first film."
"I was a little concerned that I had stretched the tether too far, in our fast-paced, modern world, with Avatar 2 coming in 12 years later," he acknowledges. "Right until we dropped the teaser trailer, and we got 148 million views in 24 hours. There's that scarce seen but wondered at principle, which is, 'Wow, we haven't seen that in a long time, but I remember how cool it was back then.'"
"Does that play in our favor? I don't know," Cameron concluded. "I guess we're going to find out."
It certainly feels like there's a lot of excitement there for Avatar: The Way of Water, and we're guessing Disney will start pulling out all the stops over the next few months to build excitement. The upcoming Avatar release should help with that, though we can't help but wonder whether this follow-up will be deemed a "disappointment" solely because it doesn't make as much as its predecessor!
To whet audiences' appetites, Disney/20th Century Studios will re-release Avatar in theaters on September 23. As for Avatar: The Way of Water, that arrives in theaters worldwide on December 16.