James Cameron’s “Avatar” currently sits as the highest-grossing film of all time, with the 2009 film having racked up a $2.93 billion global box-office haul off a $237 million budget.
The upcoming sequels represent a massive investment on the part of 20th Century Studios and Cameron, in a new interview with GQ, isn’t softening the news in regards to how much the film has to earn.
Asked about the budget, he called it “very f—ing [expensive],” so much so that he informed the studio that the film represented “the worst business case in movie history”. Not only that, in order to be profitable, it “has to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.”
In the post-pandemic era, any film making over $1 billion at the worldwide box office is a major achievement. To reach that marker, Cameron is indicating, it’s going to have to hit the $2 billion mark – essentially, it has to surpass sixth place “Spider-Man: No Way Home” ($1.92 billion) and fifth place “Avengers: Infinity War” ($2.05 billion).
Cameron talks about the big advantage he has over some other filmmakers – namely, he likes the challenge:
“I like difficult. I’m attracted by difficulty. Difficult is a f—ing magnet for me. I go straight to difficult. And I think it probably goes back to this idea that there are lots of smart, really gifted, really talented filmmakers out there that just can’t do the difficult stuff. So that gives me a tactical edge to do something nobody else has ever seen because the really gifted people don’t f—ing want to do it.”
Cameron has already said his five-film plan for the franchise depends on how the second and third films do with both already shot.
“Avatar: The Way of Water” opens everywhere on December 16th.
