James Cameron’s epic “Avatar: The Way Of Water” film is in theaters now, and it grossed $430 million this weekend globally—the second-highest global opening of 2022 after “Doctor Strange And The Multiverse of Madness.” There’s been talk that this is a low figure, or disappointing or whatever—to be fair, the film was tracking to anywhere as high as $170 million domestic, and the film only grossed $134 million in North America, which is a bit soft—one has to remember the context of a lot of December releases which tend to have a slow build. “Aquaman,” in 2018, only opened to $67.8 million domestically and earned $1.1 billion. The original “Avatar” in 2009 opened to $77 million and then, of course, went on to become the highest-grossing movie of all time (currently sitting at $2.92 billion, overtaking “Avengers Endgame” last year during its re-release). Hell, “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” made $36 million in its 2017 December release and then went on to gross $961 million worldwide (read our review).
We digress; essentially, the jury is still out on how ‘The Way Of Water’ performs in the end, but it is playing in China (though there are COVID issues now), and it’s not over until the fat Na’vi person sings. We digress.
Cameron’s been on a big blitz press tour for his expensive and epic ‘Avatar’ sequel. And in a conversation about messages in his movies—detailing how “Avatar” films undoubtedly have an environmental theme—revealed that he’s had discussions about bringing the “Terminator” franchise back to life. The conversation on the Smartless podcast with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett tangentially turned to artificial intelligence and the way that it could be used in filmmaking, and then Will Arnett asked if he tried to import messages into his film.
“Well, the Avatar films are about the environment; I’m not dealing with AI,” he explained. “If I were to do another ‘Terminator’ film and maybe try and to launch that franchise again, which is in discussion, but nothing has been decided,” “I would make it much more about the AI side of it than bad robots gone crazy.”
That’s all Cameron ended up saying about the matter, but that’s certainly new. While Cameron hasn’t directed a “Terminator” movie since “Terminator: Judgement Day,” the sequel, he’s been involved in the series for years, trying to relaunch the series with “Terminator: Genisys” (which failed) and “Terminator; Dark Fate” (which reportedly lost $120 million, and Cameron recently spoke about lamenting the choice to bring back Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger).
Cameron’s been seemingly unable to let the “Terminator” franchise go, and even ‘Dark Fate’ director Tim Miller has repeatedly detailed how difficult it was to work with Cameron.
Now Cameron could be talking about just producing a new film, as he has for the last several iterations, and he ostensibly has five “Avatar” films to deal with, but Cameron saying, “If I were to do another ‘Terminator’ film,” given the failure of all the films made without him directing… maybe he would consider it (especially if “Avatar” doesn’t make it to its fifth film, because of financial considerations).
Cameron has recently suggested that ‘The Way Of Water’ has to gross $2 billion to break even (which could be a massive exaggeration), but clearly, these movies need a lot of money to be profitable. As for “Avatar 3,” well, a minor update in this podcast. Cameron says it’s getting close, but the VFX work takes time. “We’re just finishing up now, and we’re just mixing the last couple of reels,” he said. “I’ve seen a cut of the film, but we still have to finish all the effects. It takes us about two years to finish a movie that is otherwise all shot and edited.”
But more “Terminator”? Well, clearly, discussions have been had and are being had, but it’s unclear where that goes and what happens. Listen to the entire Smartless decision below.