The fastest movie to reach the $1 billion (£831 million) mark this year was Avatar: The Way Of Water, which generated $1 billion (£831 million) at the global box office in just 14 days.
Despite radically disparate reviews, the long-delayed sequel has succeeded in winning over audiences.
It is one of just three movies, along with Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World Dominion, to gross over $1 billion this year.
However, according to filmmaker James Cameron, his highly advanced film needs to gross $2 billion to break even.
The movie follows up after the events of 2009’s Avatar, which earned $2.97 billion (£2.47 billion) at the box office and is the highest-grossing movie of all time.
The new installment is unlikely to surpass that sum, according to analysts, as moviegoing is still declining after the pandemic.
The movie, however, is most likely to surpass Top Gun: Maverick as the most popular movie of 2022 based on current box office results.
Critics who criticized The Way Of Water as a “lumbering, humorless wet squib of a movie” in which “nothing substantial happens” and “the story is really very boring” may be surprised by this information.
Others were more enthused, describing the movie as a “totally immersive waking dream” and an “eye-popping, jaw-dropping spectacle.”
In essence, the original Avatar was a science-fiction take on Pocahontas, telling the tale of rapacious colonialist humans plundering the riches of the far-off planet Pandora.
Through the perspective of human soldier Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), who fell in love with a native warrior named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), the story was recounted. Jake Sully also learned the value of Pandora’s finely managed environment.
A few years later, in the sequel, Sully and Neytiri are trying to start a family while diving underwater to defend their planet from yet another human invasion.
Sequels are not inflexible
A lot depends on how well it does at the box office because it is the first of four planned sequels that will also be released in 2024, 2026, and 2028.
In order to make sure his young actors continued to look their age, Cameron shot the third film concurrently with The Way Of Water, as well as “a little bit” of the fourth.
He stated, “I adore Stranger Things, but you get the Stranger Things effect where they’re supposed to be still in high school, but they seem like they’re 27.
He added that in Avatar 4, the young actors “age six years in the middle of the plot on page 25,” thus he had to shoot everything up until that point. Everything else will be done later.
The director, whose previous work includes Terminator, Titanic, and The Abyss, has acknowledged that the financial success of the movies will determine his intentions.
He said to Total Film magazine, “The market may be telling us we’re done in three months, or we might be semi-done, meaning: ‘Okay, let’s complete the story within movie three, and not continue on forever.'”
“Even since I wrote this, the world has changed significantly. With the pandemic and streaming, it’s a one-two punch. Alternately, perhaps we’ll remind folks why going to the theater is important. Yes, this movie does that.”
The Way Of Water, which made £25.03 million in its first two weeks of release, is the top-grossing movie worldwide and in the UK as well.
Also Read: M. Shadows Married His Wife After A 6th-Grade Romance
