Article by Lorraine Diputado Graphics by Rianna Alania
January 24, 2022
On the 7th of January way back in 2010, Director James Cameron, the brain behind the movie Avatar, announced that part two was already in the works, shortly after the film gained $1 billion in sales. After 13 long years of waiting, the sequel was finally released last December 16, 2022. Avatar: The Way of The Water gained much success in its first week, earning $434.5 million globally. And as of January 10, 2023, the movie became the seventh highest-grossing movie of all time garnering $1.7 billion in ticket sales.
So what paved the way for the sequel’s success?
This hit movie wasn’t Cameron’s first. He was also the mastermind behind Titanic, which was in the top ten movies at the box office, along with Aliens, The Terminator, and many more.
The first movie Avatar was the highest all-time worldwide box office-grossing movie, making a total of $2.922 billion in sales. Avatar made success with its ground-breaking motion capture techniques and computer-generated visuals. Cameron said that the idea was already underway, even before the release of Titanic in 1997. He initially wanted to release the movie by 1999, but he felt that technology didn’t meet the expectations of his vision for Avatar at that time. It was in the early 2000s when motion captures in films started to take off through the performances of Gollum in Lord of the Rings and Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
Cameron worked with Weta FX, a visual effects company, and from there he was able to experiment with filming in stereoscopic 3D. It cost him under $400 million for production and marketing, and 15 years to turn his imagination of blue aliens in the world of Pandora into reality.
The sequel reveals the beginning of Jake Sully and Neytiri along with their children. Sadly, they aren’t allowed a peaceful life in their homeland since familiar threats have returned and it has become unsafe for them to live. They venture out, explore the regions of Pandora, and settle to seek refuge in the oceanic home of the Metkayina clan.
If you want to know what happens next in the action-packed life of Jake and his family Avatar: The Way of the Water is now available to watch on Disney plus.
Still itching for more Avatar? You better stay tuned as Cameron has already filmed for the upcoming Avatar movies during the making of part two! If plans go accordingly, he intends to release Avatar 3 next year and the upcoming movies every 2 years.
With a decade and more in the making, we’ll see the hard work put into creating the beauty of the regions of Pandora in the series of movies to come.
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