After 13 years in the making, all eyes were on the Avatar sequel to see if it would make its budget back and turn a profit for Disney. (Disney spent a reported $460 million to create and promote the movie, according to Variety.)
How long did Avatar 2 take to make? Avatar: The Way of Water took 12 years to make, with the sequel not beginning production until August 2017. In 2006, three years before the release of the first movie, Cameron said there'd be sequels if Avatar was a hit.
Plainly, the major reason why Avatar 2 took so long is the long pre-production state, a result of Cameron's commitment to the special effects that set Avatar apart from other films of its time to begin with.
Apparently, Avatar 2 averaged 500 iterations per shot, all of those which needed to be rendered one after the other. The higher frame rate and new tech meant that rendering each frame took up 8,000 thread hours (equivalent to 3,000 virtual CPUs in a cloud data center running for an hour).
Making Of AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER - Best Of Behind The Scenes & Visual Effects With James Cameron
Did Avatar 2 make a profit?
Avatar: The Way Of Water Made A Box Office Profit Greater Than $531.7 Million. According to a James Cameron interview with Entertainment Weekly, the sequel film was naturally a gamble to pursue.
The post-production on the visual effects-heavy film also took a long period of time. The Avatar sequels, perhaps unsurprisingly, were incredibly expensive to make. Cameron told GQ that the movie would “have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That's your threshold.
Avatar 3 is scheduled to be released on December 19, 2025, by 20th Century Studios. Like its predecessor, the film was subject to multiple delays (this time it consisted of nine delays) since the crew took more time on the writing, pre-production and visual effects process.
James Cameron has confirmed that there will be a third Avatar movie. He shot scenes for Avatar 3 during the filming of Avatar: The Way of Water, and has since completed filming of the franchise's third installment.
We didn't spend as much time on relationship and emotion in the first film as we do in the second film, and it's a longer film, because there's more characters to service. There's more story to service." "People say, 'Oh my god, a family story from Disney? Just what we want,'" Cameron continued.
The fully grown avatar is much closer in appearance to the long-limbed Na'vi than to a human. Typical adult size ranges from nine to ten feet (2.75 to 3.0m) tall with blue skin, bioluminescent markings and large eyes with golden irises.
Originally, Avatar 3 was scheduled to release in December 2024, but Disney later altered its premiere lineup for a whole slew of film franchises, including Star Wars, Avengers and the Avatar sequels. Avatar 3 is now scheduled for a December 2025 release, with the later films arriving in 2029 and 2031.
Neteyam te Suli Tsyeyk'itan, or Neteyam, is a major character in the Avatar franchise, serving as one of the main characters in Avatar: The Way of Water. He is the 15-year-old eldest son of Jake Sully and Neytiri, who is also the older brother of Lo'ak, Tuktirey, and Kiri.
Cameron and Landau confirmed in 2022 that the first act of Avatar 4 had been shot, with Cameron's script reportedly stunning executives at 20th Century Studios.
Her father is not a father, her father is another mother, Eywa, the Great Mother, the sentient life force of Pandora itself that exists in all things there, but is rarely understood. So essentially yes, Kiri was born from Eywa just like Anakin Skywalker was allegedly conceived by the Force itself and its midichlorians.
Avatar 2, the sequel to the 2009 film Avatar, took 10 years to make because the director, James Cameron, wanted to develop new technology and techniques to improve the film's special effects and to make the underwater scenes more realistic. He also took time to write the script and to plan the production.
Given that Avatar 3 was filmed at the same time as the sequel, we already know some confirmed returns for the next movie led by Sam Worthington as Jake Sully and Zoe Saldaña as Neytiri. "It's bigger than you can imagine," Worthington told People in January 2024.
The director is currently deep into post-production on “Avatar 3,” which Disney has given a 2025 release date. Cameron has also shot all of the live-action scenes for “Avatar 4” that take place before a time jump in the story. The remainder of the fourth film still needs to be filmed.
While many mysteries remain regarding Avatar 3, Cameron's latest comment confirms that audiences can expect the movie, and its two sequels, to be about three hours in length. If the latest sequel's box office performance is any indication, this runtime won't impact the movie's chances for success.
James Cameron debunks the rumors of a 9-hour cut for Avatar 3, clarifies it's actually 3 hours per movie for Avatar 3, 4, and 5. Avatar 3 set to release on December 19, 2025, continues Na'vi-human storyline. Cameron already working on Avatar 4, possibly up to Avatar 7.
In reality, it would be a further decade before James Cameron's Avatar premiered, and there are several factors behind this extended delay. The primary reason for Avatar's 15-year development is that the technology of the late 1990s simply wasn't good enough to cope with the demands of Cameron's concept.
“Avatar: The Way of Water” is set to run approximately three hours and 10 minutes, nearly 30 minutes longer than the already-long original “Avatar” in 2009.
"Avatar: The Way of Water" is now the highest-grossing movie released in 2022. Much of it was filmed in a 120-feet-long, 60-feet-wide, and 30-feet-deep tank. The crew developed new motion-capture techniques for underwater filmmaking.
