You’d like to think that the world of movies and TV shows would be somewhat predictable in terms of what is a success and what isn’t. But sadly, that’s not the case. At times things are REALLY unpredictable in terms of what works and what doesn’t. For example, did anyone expect The Fast and the Furious series to go 11 mainline movies and a spinoff? Exactly. Another surprise though was the original Avatar movie by James Cameron.
This movie that came out all the way back in 2009 was meant to be a visual marvel, and it was, and it became the highest-grossing movie of all time! Yet ironically, it’s taken until 2022 to get the sequel. But James Cameron revealed that the “time in between” was necessary for one key reason…he had to make the story himself:
“What I said to the Fox regime at the time was, ‘I’ll do it, but we’ve got to play a larger game here. I don’t want to just do a movie and do a movie and do a movie. I want to tell a bigger story’,” he says. “I said, ‘Imagine a series of novels like The Lord of the Rings existed, and we’re adapting them.’ Now, that was great in theory, but then I had to go create the frickin’ novels from which to adapt it.”
And once the original movie had that massive success…then he had to try and replicate it, which he would be the first to admit that’s not easy to do:
“I had to think long and hard whether I even wanted to make another Avatar film, because it was kind of ours to lose,” he explains. “When you’ve done something that’s been that transcendent in terms of success, do you really want to go try and do that again? There’s a lot of pressure on it. I thought about it for a good two years before we finally made a deal.”
Whether Avatar: The Way of Water has the success of the original is unknown, but at the very least, the movie will release.
Source: Empire
