The special effects-heavy Avatar films cost a huge amount of money to produce, but they have historically made billions of dollars at the box office. 2009’s Avatar 1 remains the highest-grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation), earning a staggering $2.9 billion across several theatrical runs. 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water<\/a> has earned $2.3 billion, meanwhile, cementing its place as the third-highest grossing film of all time. Fire and Ash looks like it will top out at around $1.5 billion.<\/p>\n But the bigger question is whether it will end up doing well enough to convince Disney to greenlight Avatar 4 and 5. Disney has given both sequels release dates already: Avatar 4 currently has a December 21, 2029 release date, with Avatar 5 due out December 19, 2031. Cameron, now 71, would be close to 80 years old by the time it all wraps up.<\/p>\n Now, some fans are mobilizing. One issued a call to arms on reddit in a thread titled \u2018Pandora needs us (this is not a drill).\u2019<\/a> The thread, upvoted 1,300 times, saw redditor Silver-Squirrell call on their fellow fans to watch Fire and Ash multiple times if possible.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you love the Avatar franchise \u2014 which I’m sure everyone in this community does \u2014 consider seeing Fire and Ash more than once in the theater,\u201d they said. \u201cActually, please see it at least twice. Heck, bring a sibling or a friend.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I had to choose, I’d say Avatar: Fire and Ash is my favorite out of all three movies. It’s got everything I loved about the first and second movie and more. So, I’m sure I speak for a lot of us when I say I want to see it do really well in the box office. Especially with talks of Avatar 4 and 5 depending on this movie’s success.\u201d<\/p>\n Every James Cameron Movie Ranked Then, in a final plea to the 1 million-strong Avatar subreddit community, Silver-Squirrell said: \u201cMaybe this post won’t make that much of a difference to the final box office numbers, but then again, maybe it will. As they say, every dollar counts. Every little bit adds up to a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n The response from the community is mixed, with some saying they think Avatar 4 and 5 will happen regardless. Others are answering the call, saying they will indeed go see the movie again. Some have said they simply can\u2019t afford to go even once, tapping into the \u201cdepressed\u201d theatrical business, as James Cameron himself has put it. As one fan put it:<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly, this is probably partially why the movie isn’t doing as well as the other two. Like it’s still dominated the box office and is sitting pretty high on the list of highest grossing movies as is, but I think people are finding it harder to justify seeing the movie once let alone more than once with the cost of everything else these days.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to that, some Avatar fans are offering to pay for strangers\u2019 tickets. One fan who said they couldn\u2019t afford to see Fire and Ash at all in theaters saw support from a number of people in the community who said they wanted to help out. \u201cI\u2019m serious I’ll buy you the ticket,\u201d said 0nlythebest. \u201cEveryone should be able to enjoy the movie!\u201d<\/p>\n Another fan in the UK actually posted an image of a ticket they had bought to see Avatar 3 in their local theater<\/a>, offering it up to anyone who fancied it. “I just bought a ticket to help the movie get to top 10 box office,” they said.<\/p>\n Not everyone is reacting well to this community drive. Some have called for fans to stop panicking over Avatar 3\u2019s box office, pointing out Disney is the last corporation that needs \u201chelp\u201d from fans. \u201cOh we have so lost the plot,\u201d said one. \u201cSorry but a multi-billion dollar media franchise does not NEED help from us,\u201d said another. \u201cIf a movie doesn\u2019t get a sequel after $1.5 billion then the whole system is beyond broken.\u201d<\/p>\n James Cameron recently said Avatar 3 would need to make a lot of money, and he\u2019d need to figure out a way to make Avatar 4 and 5 for less money in order to get the thumbs up from Disney.<\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s the thing: the movie industry is depressed right now. Avatar 3 cost a lot of money. We have to do well in order to continue. We have to do well and we need to figure out how to make Avatar movies more inexpensively in order to continue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we continue and we do 4, we also do 4 and 5 together. So we made 2 and 3 together, one big story. And then 4 and 5 is another big story.\u201d<\/p>\n Cameron\u2019s comments here echo those he made in the run up to Fire and Ash\u2019s release, where he admitted he was feeling nervous about the film\u2019s box office performance and expressed concern about the \u201cforces\u201d working against theatrical releases in 2025. Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast<\/a>, Cameron said there was potential for \u201csequelitis.\u201d<\/p>\n “People tend to dismiss sequels unless it\u2019s the third Lord of the Rings film and you want to see what happens to everybody, which in my mind this is \u2014 this is the culmination of a story arc, but that may not be how the public sees it,\u201d he said. And there\u2019s the \u201cone-two punch\u201d of streaming and Covid, which means fewer people are going to the movies \u2014 75% of the number in 2019, Cameron suggested.<\/p>\n When pressed on how much Avatar: Fire and Ash cost to make, Cameron wouldn\u2019t be drawn into divulging a figure, only suggesting it was a lot of money, and so the movie will have to make a lot of money to turn a profit.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is one metric f**k ton of money, which means we have to make two metric f**k tons of money to make a profit,\u201d he said. \u201cI have no doubt in my mind that this movie will make money. The question is, does it make enough money to justify doing it again?\u201d<\/p>\n And on that point, Cameron admitted he was \u201cabsolutely\u201d ready to walk away from Avatar if Fire and Ash flops. \u201cI\u2019ve been in Avatar land for 20 years,\u201d he said. \u201cActually 30 years because I wrote it in \u201895, but I wasn\u2019t working continuously on it for those first 10 years. Yeah, absolutely, sure. If this is where it ends, cool.\u201d But what about open story threads? \u201cThere\u2019s one open thread. I\u2019ll write a book!\u201d Cameron responded.<\/p>\n Disney has used Avengers: Doomsday teaser trailers (which, apparently, are neither teasers nor trailers<\/a>) to encourage repeat viewings of Avatar: Fire and Ash in theaters. Four teasers have been released so far<\/a>, with each going online after a week of theatrical exclusivity ahead of Fire and Ash.<\/p>\n Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Avatar: Fire and Ash rumbles on at the box office and it becomes increasingly clear that James…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-425901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
<\/a>The fate of Avatar 4 and 5 is still up in the air. Photo by VCG\/VCG via Getty Images.<\/p>\n