Cameron： I have plans to shoot Avatar 6 and 7. Whether the box office is successful depends on the third week.

All In

Recently, in order to promote Avatar: The Way of Water, director James Cameron was interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter. He mentioned that he had plans to shoot Avatar 6 and Avatar 7, but he might let other directors direct them, because he would be 89 years old by then (sic).

At present, among the sequels of Avatar planned by Disney, Avatar 3, Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 are scheduled on December 20, 2024, December 18, 2026 and December 22, 2028 respectively.

Cameron is on the set of Avatar: The Way of Water.

Cameron said: "The sequel to this series has been written from beginning to end, with four scripts and complete design. If given the chance, we know exactly what our goal is. If the audience wants to see it, if they like Avatar: The Way of Water enough, how many sequels will be completely driven by the market. "

Earlier, Cameron revealed that Avatar 2 had to exceed $2 billion at the global box office to break even. At present, the shooting team has finished shooting the motion capture parts of Avatar 2, Avatar 3 and Avatar 4, which took a total of 16 months.

In this interview article entitled "All In", Cameron said: "I will be 89 years old by then (in 2043). Obviously, I can’t make Avatar movies indefinitely, which requires a lot of energy. I must train someone (to take over) I don’t care how smart you are as a director, you don’t know how to shoot this series well. "

Interview with Cameron by The Hollywood Reporter

Cameron was born in 1954, and he is 68 years old. In an interview, he estimated that he might make five or six movies for the rest of his life, and three of them are probably Avatar series.

The environmental topic mentioned in Avatar, which was released in 2009, attracted attention, but he said that the sequel would be a little different: "You can’t overdo the environmental elements. Now people’s lives are anxious enough … Maybe things that didn’t appear in 2009 have happened now, and environmental problems are no longer entertainment."

Cameron said that the purpose of Avatar: The Way of Water is not to make people afraid of climate change, but to propose alternative ways forward through the choice of the role of Nami in the film. He said: "We have gone from completely denying climate change to fatalistic acceptance, as if there is no middle way. I don’t make movies to make everything gloomy and destructive, but to provide constructive solutions. "

Cameron is on the set of Avatar: The Way of Water.

In the autumn of 2010, Cameron promised to make two more Avatar films, and reached an agreement with FOSS, that is, the film company and Cameron will jointly fund a non-profit organization, the Avatar Foundation, to support the rights and interests of indigenous people and environmental protection.

At that time, FOSS proudly announced the release date of the first sequel: December 2014.

Cameron said: "I never believed those self-entertainment schedules they announced." Only after he dived into the Mariana Trench in 2012 did he seriously consider making a film. In the first few months, he just took notes: thoughts on Pandora’s biology, culture and theme.

Inspired by his experience in making the sci-fi TV series "Dark Angel" for Fox in the early 21st century, he convened a TV drama-style scriptwriter’s room in mid-2013. "On the first day, I walked in, dropped 800 pages of notes and said, do your homework, and I’ll see you next week. ’”

In the end, he handed the scriptwriting task of Avatar 2 to Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, and the couple successfully restarted the Rise of the Planet of the Apes series. The script writing process took four years, and four sequels were completed in one breath.

Cameron is on the set of Avatar: The Way of Water.

Cameron finally started filming Avatar 2 in September 2017. Just a few months after filming, Cameron found that his boss had changed: Disney bought 20th Century Flowserve for $71.3 billion.

Interestingly, when Cameron and producer Landau "peddled" Avatar in Hollywood in 2005, they showed test clips to then Disney CEO robert a.iger and CFO Alan Bogman. Disney was satisfied and wanted to invest, but in the end Cameron chose his old partner, 20th Century Flowserve.

In March 2019, when Disney completed the acquisition of Foss, Alan Bogman met with Cameron and Landau again. Bogman said to them, "Look, Jim (Cameron), we have to buy the film company in order to get the sequel to Avatar."

In fact, after the global success of Avatar 13 years ago, Disney also spent $500 million to establish the Avatar scenic spot in Disneyland, Florida, USA, and has always been interested in this IP.

Talking about the box office pressure of Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron said that his movie was different from Marvel Comics and DC superhero movies, which had a big box office in the first week and a 60% drop in the second week, and took a long-flowing model. Some media asked Cameron what to do if the 190-minute movie audience wanted to go to the toilet. He replied, "Just buy a ticket and brush it for the part that was missed when going to the toilet!"

Cameron is not completely joking. In the past, audiences liked to brush his movies twice or even three times. Whether it is Titanic or Avatar, these two high-grossing movies didn’t have a high box office. In December 2009, Avatar’s first weekend box office was only $79 million. After that, its release fell by only 8% every week and lasted for 10 weeks.

Therefore, Cameron said, to judge whether the market of Avatar: The Way of Water is successful, we can’t just look at the box office on the first weekend, but we will know it in the third week.

Cameron used to quarrel with Flowserve executives because of budget overruns when filming Titanic and Avatar. But this time, he said that Disney got along well with each other, and the two sides were still in their honeymoon period. He said, "It’s hard to say, if Avatar: The Way of Water doesn’t make money, then the honeymoon period will be over."

In the eyes of many people, it seems that movie audiences don’t like 3D movies so much nowadays. After all, too many 3D movies are dim and the audience experience is very poor. But viewers will pay for specific 3D movies. In September this year, Avatar was re-released in many markets, including the United States, and got a box office of $76 million, 97% of which came from 3D screens.

This replay also made Cameron realize that audiences who were children in 2009 are still interested in 3D movies.

No matter what the prospect of 3D movies is, no one denies that Avatar has promoted the popularity of 3D screens. When Avatar was released in 2009, there were only 6,000 digital 3D screens in the world, and now it is 110,000.

As for whether Avatar is derived from streaming media on TV series, Cameron said that this work relies too much on motion capture and CG, which is too expensive for TV series. "I can only say that it may be possible if technology develops to a certain extent, but I am not interested in making Avatar into a TV series now."