“Avatar: The Way Of Water” is now in theaters, and only time will tell if it’s another massive financial success for James Cameron. It’s off to a good start, in any case: $550 million at the global box office so far. But the new sequel needs bigger numbers than that if Cameron takes the franchise past “Avatar 3,” a movie that, Variety reports, is a direct continuation of “The Way Of Water.”
In a new feature with “The Way Of Water” writers, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver said they had “too much material” in the sequel’s original script and had to cut it into two films. “From the beginning, one of the challenges — I’ll say it was a delicious challenge — is that there was too much material,” Silver told Variety. The reason for splitting the film in two? Too many major events, and a slow first act. “Carrying this burden was always an issue in terms of getting the first act of that first movie moving, and there was just an enormous amount of material in there,” Silver continued. “So somewhere after we had started writing, [Cameron] called us up and he said, ‘Look, we’ve got too much material. We’re going to split it into two movies.’”
“The Way Of Water” picks up fourteen years after the original 2009 film, with Jake Sully and Neytiri now having a family of four children among the Na’vi. But Col. Miles Quaritch is back (so to speak) on Pandora to kill Jake, which forces the family into exile to the coastal Metkayina clan. Quaritch’s human son Spider, who lives with the Na’vi, also plays a pivotal role in the sequel. Cameron brought Jaffa and Silver on to write the sequel because he believed them being parents of an adopted daughter would help them lend authenticity to the Sully family’s unique dynamics. But bringing the family to life in the first act proved too large a narrative undertaking and forced Jaffa, Silver, and Cameron to split “The Way Of Water” into two separate scripts.
It’s hard to believe that a three-hour movie originally had so much story it needed to get cut into two films, but Jaffa and Silver said cutting down the script wasn’t an option for Cameron. “He was like, ‘No, let’s just follow the trail that we created and keep writing,” said Jaffa. In due time, however, it was clear the magnitude of the story was too large for one film, “which has worked out great for us, you know,” Jaffa joked. That’s part of why Cameron envisions the “Avatar” franchise as a five-movie series: “The Way Of Water” was too big a story for one film.
So, a little sneak preview of what to expect in December 2024 with “Avatar 3”: it completes the original story Jaffa and Silver laid out with Cameron in “The Way Of Water.” But will the “Avatar” franchise go beyond that story arc for “Avatar 4” and “Avatar 5“? It’s all about the box office numbers at this point, but fans should expect all films will be out eventually. After all, never bet against James Cameron.