How expensive is 'Avatar 2'? James Cameron feels it has to be 'third highest grossing' film to break even

James Cameron drops BOMBSHELL: Director says he may not helm 'Avatar' 4 and 5

In a recent interview with GQ, the 68-year-old director was asked about the film budget and even though he didn’t tell the exact number, he did state that the movie has to do a phenomenal job at the box office to cover the production cost. During the conversation, Cameron also noted that the budget of the sequel is so high that he told the executives of Disney and 20th Century Studios that it represented “the worst business case in movie history.”

He added, “You have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.”

Now, that’s a pretty tough task to achieve and even though ‘The Way of Water’ is expected to have a gigantic opening in its opening weekend, it will all depend on word-of-mouth or initial reactions as to how the movie will do when it hit the theatres.

As far as the list of highest-grossing movies is concerned, ‘Avatar’ sits at the top with $2.92 billion while ‘Avengers: Endgame’ is second with $2.79 billion. The third position on the list is held by another Cameron movie ‘Titanic’, which has total earnings of $2.20 billion. Meanwhile, ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ ($2.06 billion) and ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ ($2.04 billion) round off the Top 5.

According to the list, ‘The Way of Water’ has to be somewhere between ‘Titanic’ and ‘The Force Awakens’ in the list to be called a “blockbuster” and Cameron knows that the performance of ‘The Way of Water’ will pave the way for the upcoming ‘Avatar’ sequels.

In 2022, only one movie has managed to cross the $1 billion mark at the box office and it’s none other than Tom Cruise’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick’. Will ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ be the second movie to break the $1 billion mark? We’ll get to know when the movie hits theatres on December 16, 2022.

The movie sees Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana returning as Jake Sully and Neytiri. Meanwhile, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang also return as Kiri and Colonel Miles Quaritch. On the other hand, actors such as Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Jamie Flatters, and Britain Dalton join the movie as the new cast members.