Avatar: The Way of Water is doing well at the box office, as the film just crossed $1.89 billion worldwide, and it is on track to surpass Spider-Man: No Way Home’s $1.91 billion figure.
Deadline reports that Avatar: The Way of Water is doing strong even in its fifth weekend, staying at the top position. Spider-Man: No Way Home is the sixth highest-grossing film at the global box office, and it really does seem like Cameron’s sequel is going to take that spot soon.
How James Cameron pitched Avatar: The Way of Water
Director James Cameron had said that if Avatar: The Way of Water becomes profitable, additional sequels will be greenlit as well. Actors Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña talked to The Wrap, where they revealed their reactions on hearing about Cameron’s plans for the Avatar series’.
The cast and the crew of 2009’s Avatar were looking forward to the film and were excited about the concept. Cameron told them that the film had great potential.
“It’s like, ‘Well, if this movie does well, and we prove this concept, I have so many ideas for what we’re going to do in Pandora,’” Saldana said. “And that was very promising. Never in a million years could we have imagined the reception that ‘Avatar’ was going to have. So in 2013, I think at the premiere or during award season, Jim’s like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re going to totally go back.’ And it wasn’t until 2013 when he told us.”
And it was in 2013 that Cameron informed the cast individually that he figured out how to extend the franchise. “He said, ‘Rather than make a carbon copy, I’ve figured out how to extend the planet, extend the family.’ And that was about as clear as it was,” Worthington said.
“And then 2015, we both went and saw a room full of the visuals of the saga. And I think my wife was heavily pregnant at the time, and we’re seeing a movie in this drawing form of a family, and we’re thinking we’re about to go on this journey. And it was like… It wasn’t cut into movies. It was just this really emotional journey through pictures at that point. And then you’re going, ‘Well how are we going to do that?’”
