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In an interview with Variety, Cameron was asked about potential production timelines for future projects he hopes to direct, including Ghosts of Hiroshima and the fourth and fifth Avatar installments. “There are others that I may or may not direct. And the big swing in all of this is, do we make any money with Avatar 3?” he said. “I mean, we’ll make some money. But the question is, what kind of a profit margin, if any, is there, and how much of an inducement is that to continue on in this universe? Or maybe we wait a while until we figure out how to bring costs down. Because production costs have spiraled over the last few years, especially in VFX. Everything’s gone up an enormous amount, and it’s starting to close out the type of films that I like to make.”
He continued, “So there’s an argument for taking a pause and figuring that out. There’s an argument for going out and doing some smaller, more personal film in the meantime, while that gets figured out. There’s an argument, in wild success, for us just launching and just going straight into [Avatar 4 and Avatar 5] and I figure out a production methodology where I have a bit of a hiatus where I can make another film. And there’s another argument that says just go make those two damn movies and figure everything else out when I’m 80.”
Will The Next Avatar Sequels Be Delayed?
Given Cameron’s box office track record, the notion of Avatar: Fire and Ash failing to make enough money to warrant additional sequels is farfetched. The first two Avatar movies are part of the extremely rare $2 billion worldwide club, so the series is a substantial draw. It’s reasonable to assume that Fire and Ash will become this year’s highest grossing film. That said, Cameron’s thought process is still sound. Unsurprisingly, the Avatar films are very expensive endeavors. The Way of Water had a production budget in the range of $350-460 million. A reported budget for Fire and Ash isn’t available yet, but it should be in the same ballpark.
It’s important to keep in mind production budgets do not include marketing and distribution costs, which adds to an already hefty expenses report. Disney is definitely going to put together a sizable promotional campaign for Avatar: Fire and Ash to attract people to the theater so they can recoup their investment. The larger the production budget, the more a film has to earn to turn a profit. The first two Avatar films had no problems passing their break even points and becoming massively successful. Still, you never want to assume a $2 billion worldwide gross, and Fire and Ash is a bit of a litmus test for the Avatar franchise. Its predecessors benefitted from a sense of novelty. The original marked the first time big-screen spectacle looked like this, and the sequel got a boost from a prolonged absence. It remains to be seen if there are diminishing returns for Fire and Ash.
