Avatar: The Way of Water has landed with a splash this weekend, dominating the box office and also managing to please audiences even more than the original Avatar. Although the movie is very unlikely to top Avatar’s phenomenal worldwide gross, which currently stands at $2.92 billion, it is on track to become one of the highest-grossing movies of 2022. That will only be helped by a high level of audience praise that has seen Avatar: The Way of Water’s audience score on Rotten Tomatoes massively improve on its predecessor.
For a sequel that comes over a decade after the first movie, there are plenty of ways that Avatar: The Way of Water could have become one of the biggest disasters in cinema history. However, James Cameron has once again defied the odds to create a follow-up movie that is better received by audiences than the original. While critics have not been quite as kind, the audience rating of 94% is a 12% increase on Avatar’s decent 82%. While it is still early days, it seems that Avatar: The Way of Water has pleased the majority of those who have seen it so far. You can see some of the comments here.
Avatar 3 Has Already Completed Filming and Has An Unbelievable Runtime
When it comes to a movie with a budget the size of Avatar: The Way of Water, it would not be unusual for a studio to want to ensure that the film turns a profit before green-lighting further sequels. That is certainly not the way things have gone for what could be James Cameron’s magnum opus, as he has already completed his initial cut of Avatar 3, and it reportedly comes in at an incredible 9 hours in length.
Considering one of the only complaints about Avatar: The Way of Water is its 3 hours 12-minute runtime, there is very little chance that the final cut of the third installment will be anywhere near its current reported length. Despite this, James Cameron has apparently said he wants to complete the whole VFX package for the entire movie before starting to cut it down. Whether this indicates that he will want to release some epic extended cut later is something only Cameron knows right now.
What is clear is that Avatar: The Way of Water is doing enough to allow Cameron to continue on his path to at least Avatar 5, and his contingency plan to end the franchise with Avatar 3 if things didn’t go well for his first sequel seems like it won’t be needed. That means Cameron has two years to complete Avatar 3 and get it cut down to a reasonable length before it hits theaters on December 20, 2024. If all goes according to plan, this will lead to Avatar 4 arriving on December 18, 2026, and Avatar 5 landing on December 22, 2028.