Time is the master of erosion. Everything will succumb to its grip, and that includes the passion people have for certain movies. AVATAR remains the highest grossing movie of all time, and though a sequel has been in the works for a long time there will be a decade-long gap between the first film and AVATAR 2. This is a large amount of time in which people to lose interest in the 2009 mega hit, but director James Cameron is confident people will be just as fascinated with Pandora as ever by the time the sequel hits.
While promoting the newly opened Pandora: The World of Avatar attraction at Disney World, Cameron spoke with CNN and said there are plenty of reasons why the gap between the first and second movie won’t negatively affect the movie's box office, bringing up how this isn’t the first time he’s dealt with delayed sequels:
Well it didn’t hurt Avatar, that there was no Avatar before Avatar. So I kind of rest my case. But it was a seven year gap between The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, seven year gap between Alien and Aliens. It’s gonna be obviously more like a ten year gap between Avatar and Avatar 2. But Avatar 2 you are going to with not the promise, but the certainty of three more films beyond that, and that’s a very different concept with the audience. And a lot of the delay has been around creating that overall vision. And by the way, this land will help bridge that gap in the public conscience. People will come here, and say, man I need some Avatar.
The gap between AVATAR (2009) and the release of AVATAR 2 (2020) is larger than any he’s handled before, but he’s got a point when bringing up ALIEN and TERMINATOR. Both Cameron-directed sequels, T2 and ALIENS, earned more than their predecessors despite coming out the better part of a decade after. But in those cases the movies were able to match, if not exceed, the originals in quality, so AVATAR 2 will have to do the same if it’s to retain the fan base.
That aside, the new park is probably the series’ best insurance policy, keeping the wonder of Pandora constantly flowing to the point where, like Cameron said, people will be begging for more movies. Plus, even if the movie makes half of what the first movie did (which given expanded foreign markets is low-balling it) it will still make the sequel one of the biggest movies ever. Then there are the following three movies, all of which could be just as big. In short, no matter how much time passes, Cameron will earn enough money from these movies to build his own Pandora on the moon’s surface.
AVATAR 2 arrives on December 18, 2020; AVATAR 3 follows on December 17, 2021; Next is AVATAR 4 on December 20, 2024; Finally, there’s AVATAR 5 on December 19, 2025.