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.”
Last November, Cameron told GQ that “Avatar: The Way of Water“ would need to be “third or fourth highest-grossing film in history” to break-even. People thought he was nuts.
It ended up being the third highest-grossing movie of all time with a worldwide tally of $2.3 billion. Now, Deadline’s sources are saying that ‘The Way of Water’ more than just broke even, it made a profit $531.7 million.
The result is that Cameron’s sequel, which cost $400 million to make, was last year’s most profitable movie. In addition, it placed Cameron as the only filmmaker in history to have three movies among the top 20 highest-grossing of all time, let alone the top 10.
‘The Way of Water’ was seen a major risk by many in the industry, but Cameron proved them wrong, again. The result is that we’re going to get three more ‘Avatar’ movies, released in the next five years.
Funny story: 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!”
Cameron writes, directs, produces and edits his movies, he’s a cinematic Jack of all trades. And he’s not done either with this franchise — “Avatar 3” is scheduled to open on December 20, 2024, with the fourth movie set for December 18, 2026. “Avatar 5” is scheduled for December 22, 2028.
Cameron is also planning on directing a WWII Hiroshima movie right after “Avatar 3.”