James Cameron Calls AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER "The Worst Business Case in Movie History"
After several years of development and production, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water will finally be released this year! There are a lot of mixed reactions from fans on this sequel from the trailers, but I’m actually excited about what it’s going to deliver. It’s hard to bet against James Cameron, especially when it comes to sequels.
It’s been quite the journey for Cameron and his team to get this movie made, especially because of the technology used to shoot it. That technology didn’t even exist, so they spent a lot of time inventing the technology they need to shoot the movie. The tech involves new cameras that could shoot underwater and a motion-capture system that could “collect separate shots from above and below water and integrate them into a unified virtual image; they needed new algorithms, new AI, to translate what Cameron shot into what you see.” Wild!
As you might imagine, there has been a ton of money pumped into this technology and the production of these films and Cameron describes his sequel to GQ as "the worst business case in movie history."
The GQ profile runs through all the troubles Cameron faced during the development of this technology saying: "Nothing would work the first time Cameron and the production tried it. Or the second. Or usually the third. One day in Wellington, New Zealand, where Cameron was finishing the film, he showed me a single effects shot, numbered 405. 'That means there's been 405 versions of this before it gets to me,' he said. Cameron has been working on the movie since 2013; it was due out years ago. In September, he still wasn't done."
Because of all those years of trial, error, scrapped concepts, and experiments, the budget inflated to insane levels. When Cameron was asked by GQ how expensive the sequel’s budget was he answered, "Very f**king," and went on to describe the film as "the worst business case in movie history."
Cameron goes on to say that the minimum goal of profitability for Avatar: The Way of Water is an epic level. He explained: "You have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That's your threshold. That's your break even."
Damn! Will he actually be able to pull that off!? We’ll find out soon enough. As for the difficulties of developing a movie like this, the filmmaker is ok with it. He said: “I like difficult. I’m attracted by difficult. Difficult is a fking 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 fking want to do it.”
The film is set more than a decade after the events of the first film, “Avatar: The Way of Water begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.”
The movie stars Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, and Kate Winslet.