James Cameron Opens Up About Avatar’s Success Ahead Of The Re-release And The Sequel

Avatar Director James Cameron worked for 13 years on the sequel to the first film, and ahead of its premiere he wanted to make sure he understood why the film was so successful.

Avatar, which released in 2009, is the highest-grossing film of all time, grossing over $2.8 billion at the box office, and pressure was high for Cameron to perfect a sequel that lived up to the legacy. from the original movie.

Cameron said The Times UK“When I sat down with my writers to begin Avatar 2, I said we can’t do the next one until we understand why the first one worked so well. We need to crack the code of what happened.”

He added that there was a sort of successful trifecta that Avatar honed: “Well, all movies work on different levels. The first is the surface, which is the character, the problem, and the resolution. The second is thematic. What is the movie trying to say? But Avatar also works on a third level, the subconscious.”

The sci-fi fantasy film starring Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington managed to captivate the world’s subconscious, according to Cameron, which is why it was so successful.

And why the film continues so well. Avatar was re-released Friday, September 23 as a 4K remaster in high dynamic range, giving viewers the option to rewatch the film in 2D and 3D in theaters for a completely enhanced experience.

Beyond the reissue, Avatar: The Way of the Water will be released in theaters on December 16, 2022, and the Titanic the director said he waited a long time to even consider the sequel.

“I think I could have done a sequel two years later and blown it up because people didn’t relate to the characters or the direction of the movie,” Cameron said. “My personal experience is this: I did a sequel called ‘Aliens’, seven years after the first movie. It was very well received. I did a sequel called ‘Terminator 2’, seven years after the first movie. order of magnitude more, in revenue, than the first movie.”

He added that he had written an entire screenplay for the sequel. Avatar but ended up throwing it all away and starting over.

“I was a little worried that I had stretched the bond too much, in our fast-paced modern world, with Avatar 2 happen 12 years later,” Cameron said. “Until we dropped the trailer and got 148 million views in 24 hours. There’s this barely seen but asked principle, which is, “Wow, we haven’t seen this in a long time, but I remember how cool it was back then.” Does this work in our favour? I do not know. I guess we’ll find out.”

Avatar: The Way of the Water Undoubtedly set to be one of the biggest releases of the year, costing $250 million to make, complete with groundbreaking special effects and underwater filming technology. Zoe Saldana returns as Neytiri, with Sam Worthington as Jake Sully and Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch.

Additionally, the film stars Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao, CCH Pounder, Sigourney Weaver, and Kate Winslet.

Newsweek reached out to a rep for Cameron for comment.