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Almost 13 years to the day that James Cameron brought his blue 3D aliens to London for the 2009 Avatar world premiere, setting the wheels in motion for what would become the highest-grossing film of all time (current figure: $2.92 billion), the director landed back in the British capital to give the same treatment to its long-awaited sequel.
Avatar: The Way of Water — now with Disney following its acquisition of original studio Fox — took over London’s Leicester Square for its world premiere on Tuesday afternoon, with the director, producer Jon Landau and entire cast on hand to help give the sci-fi epic a major push as it vies to break enough box office records to recoup the film’s eye-popping $350 million-plus budget (and give enough momentum for Cameron’s planned further three sequels).
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Pandora returnees Zoe Saldaña, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang were present on the aquamarine-colored carpet, as were Na’vi newcomers Kate Winslet, Jack Champion, Jamie Flatters, Bailey Bass and Trinity Bliss. Meanwhile, on the exec side, chairman of Disney Studios content Alan Bergman and 20th Century Studios president Steve Asbell were also in attendance.
“I’ve been working on the production for this for five years, and realizing it’s done … it’s kind of like Zen meditation,” said Cameron, speaking on the carpet. Talking to The Hollywood Reporter later, he acknowledged how much money the film needed to break even, saying it “probably had to be the seventh or eighth” most successful film of all time.
“Which is quite a daunting bar to get over, especially now, because the market has contracted,” he said, adding that if he had his way he’d have waited “another five years to release the film, so we’re totally out of the pandemic.”
Worthington, who returns in the lead role of Jake Sully (now with a Na’vi family of his own), recalled that it wasn’t until 2013 — four year’s after the original — that he heard from Cameron about a sequel. “I got a call from Jim saying he’d worked out, now just how to make a carbon copy, but how to expand the story and expand the world and the characters in a very unique way,” he told THR, adding that, by the time he saw the designs in 2015 his wife was heavily pregnant. “So we were watching this family story unfold as we were also going on that journey.”
Actual shooting on The Way of Water didn’t start until 2017, but despite the 13-year wait until the release, Lang — who plays chief antagonist Colonel Miles Quaritch — said that he was always confident the day would come.
“I’m an optimist and always felt we were going to get there, even when it seemed like the horizon was receding rather than coming in this direction,” he told THR. “But I always knew we’d get there, I have nothing but faith in Jim Cameron.”
The Way of Water represents a decade-long passion project for Cameron and his first film since the original Avatar. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter for a recent cover story, he described his initial desire to turn his creation into a franchise with several installments.
“I want to tell an epic story over a number of films. Let’s paint on a bigger canvas. Let’s plan it that way. Let’s do The Lord of the Rings. Of course, they had the books. I had to write the book first — which isn’t a book, it’s a script,” he said.
Even before the world premiere in London and the reviews, The Way of Water had already earned one influential fan. In a tweet, Guillermo del Toro, whose friendship with Cameron goes back to the Mexican director’s 1993 feature Cronos, described the film as a “staggering achievement,” adding that it was “chockfull of majestic Vistas and emotions at an epic, epic scale.”
Del Toro said that Cameron was a “master at the peak of his powers.”
Avatar: The Way of Water lands in cinemas worldwide on Dec. 16
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