Avatar: The Way of Water director James Cameron already has a response for audiences who might think the upcoming sequel is too long.
"I don't want anybody whining about length when they sit and binge-watch [television] for eight hours," Cameron said in an interview with Empire. "I can almost write this part of the review. 'The agonizingly long three-hour movie...' It's like, give me a f—— break. I've watched my kids sit and do five one-hour episodes in a row." The official runtime for The Way of Water has not yet been revealed.
Avatar: The Way of Water, an upcoming sequel to 2009's Avatar, is set a decade after the events of the original film and sees Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña reprise their respective roles as Jake Sulley and Neytiri. Other returning cast members include Stephen Lang as Colonel Quaritch and Sigourney Weaver. While Weaver will not reprise her 2009 role as Dr. Grace Augustine, she will appear as a young Na'vi female, Kiri.
The Avatar Saga
Apart from the long-awaited sequel, Cameron has planned three other films in the Avatar saga. In a recent interview, however, Cameron explained that he would be ready to pass the torch to another director following the third Avatar film. "The Avatar films themselves are kind of all-consuming," he said.
"I've got some other things I'm developing as well that are exciting," Cameron continued. "I think eventually over time – I don't know if that's after three or after four – I'll want to pass the baton to a director that I trust to take over, so I can go do some other stuff that I'm also interested in. Or maybe not. I don't know." Even with multiple sequels planned, the director has spoken about his initial hesitation to make multiple Avatar films, worried that a sequel might spoil the original film's success.
"I had to think long and hard whether I even wanted to make another Avatar film because it was kind of ours to lose," Cameron explained in a recent interview. "When you’ve done something that’s been that transcendent in terms of success, do you really want to go try and do that again? There’s a lot of pressure on it. I thought about it for a good two years before we finally made a deal." Along with receiving critical acclaim, the original 2009 film became the highest-grossing film of all time.
Avatar: The Way of Water is set to release in theaters on Dec. 16, 2022.
Source: Empire, via SlashFilm