“Avatar” now currently sits right behind “Titanic” at $1.4 billion. “Titanic,” which Cameron also directed, still sits at the top at $1.8 billion.
Cameron is now the only director to claim the cinematic feat of having two movies gross over a billion dollars, which is a small group that contains only five films.
The other films in cinematic history to pass $1 billion are (in order from smallest to largest via Box Office Mojo): "The Dark Knight" ($1.001B), "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" ($1.07B) and "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" ($1.1B).
Not only that, but it grossed that billion dollars in only 17 days! It took "The Dark Knight" 33 weeks (and a re-release) to pass the $1 billion mark in 2008. This is incredible!
I don't think "Titanic" was even this successful, this fast, which makes me wonder...with "Avatar" only about $400 million behind “Titanic,” can it make its way to the No. 1 spot?
With all this success it was only a matter of time until word of a sequel came out.
A reader of Ain’t It Cool News attended a press screening of "Avatar" and sent in an e-mail with a quote confirming "Avatar 2" from Cameron himself.
The news came after the screening that the submitter attended during a Q&A session with Cameron and two of the crew members from the film.
Here’s a snippet from the e-mail AICN posted:
"I just saw a Variety Screening Series showing of 'Avatar' at the Arclight theater in Hollywood tonight, followed with a Q&A with James Cameron and two of his visual effects artists. One of the artists mentioned that they’ll never again do this for the first time, meaning that everything they did in the making of 'Avatar' was just a lot of instinctive grasping in the dark. Cameron agreed with him. He also told him to expect the studio to want another one, as they’d passed the billion $ mark. A second film will be easier, as the technology now exists, thanks to the movie. The moderator asked if there *would* be an 'Avatar' sequel. To which Cameron answered that the plan had always been to make a trilogy of films. Finally, Cameron actually said it: 'Yes, there’ll be another.'”
But in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Cameron suggested there would be not one sequel, but two.
“I’ve had a storyline in mind from the start — there are even scenes in 'Avatar' that I kept in because they lead to the sequel. It just makes sense to think of it as a two or three film arc, in terms of the business plan. The CG plants and trees and creatures and the musculo-skeletal rigging of the main characters — that all takes an enormous amount of time to create. It’d be a waste not to use it again.”
It’s not an official announcement from Fox, but if Cameron says it, it must be true. Two billion dollar films on his resume allows him to do whatever he wants.
Fox will obviously want to take advantage of the heavy investment in time and money put into Cameron’s lengthy project. With the technology, experience, 3D models and research into the details of the world of Pandora already done, an "Avatar" sequel will be significantly easier and less costly to produce.
The question remains as to whether or not Cameron will again direct. Will he take full control over the sequels or will he produce and work on other projects while another director is brought in? Cameron likes to keep secrets, and it's true that he's never directed a sequel to any of his movies besides "Terminator 2."
If you saw “Avatar,” what did you think? Are you in the mood for “Avatar” to become a trilogy?
