James Cameron Claims ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Needs to Make Around $800 Million to Break Even

You gotta love James Cameron. The guy is a straight up risk-taking maniac. He keeps swinging for the fences with every movie. The result is a career filled with industry game changers such as “Aliens,” “The Terminator,” “T2,” “Titanic,” and, of course, “Avatar.”

When pressed by a Fox Executive, who begged him to make The Way of Water’s 192-minute runtime shorter, Cameron admitted to yelling at him “Get the Fuck out of my office!” The man is fearless.

Cameron is now saying, in an interview with GQ, that his upcoming “Avatar: The Way Of Water,” was “Very fucking [expensive],” and “the worst business case in movie history.” According to Cameron, in order to be profitable, ‘The Way of Water’ would have “to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.”

What does “third or fourth-highest-grossing film in history” entail exactly? Well, according to the all-time domestic box-office charts, that would mean around $800 million. Unless, Cameron is talking worldwide box-office totals, which would mean $2 billion. I hope it’s the former.

Cameron has already mentioned that, if ‘The Way of Water’ doesn’t break even, he might stop making ‘Avatar movies after the third, already completed one, gets released.

The first "Avatar” is the highest-grossing picture of all time worldwide, and one would think that the sequel would also make a ton of money come this December. However, you’d be a fool to think it’ll match the original film's intake.

Fact of the matter is that “Avatar” was released 13 years ago and the cinematic landscape has dramatically changed since then; people’s tastes are different and the pandemic has shape-shifted the whole industry.