Movies

Avatar 2 Budget Might Make it Really Hard to Break Even

Avatar 2 Budget Might Make it Really Hard to Break Even
Image credit: Legion-Media

There are certain downsides to astronomical budgets.

The original Avatar movie directed by James Cameron boasted a budget over $230 million, but the sequel appears to enjoy an even more ambitious figure.

Back in 2009, the first Avatar movie has garnered a sensational box office of around $3 billion, making it an absolute success and essentially making history. However, the sequels are now facing quite a bar, with fans believing that their budget and expectations will make it hard for the movies to actually make a profit.

Deadline reported that all four planned sequels of Avatar have secured a jaw-dropping figure of $1 billion, which essentially makes it $250 per each movie. These days, for a movie to be considered a success, it usually needs to reap at least twice the sum of its budget. One needs to also keep in mind that there will be massive marketing spending on top of the production budget.

This means that anything less than a billion in box office might be a "flop" for Avatar 2 — at least according to some fans who are discussing the movie's prospects on Reddit.

However, some people believe that an OK break-even point for Avatar 2 would be something in between $500 million and $650 million — numbers that are not that difficult to reach for the upcoming movie, given that even Marvel's highly-criticized Thor: Love and Thunder managed to gross more than that.

But it's the sequel of Avatar that took 13 years to make we're talking about. Some people argue that anything less than a billion would simply be "disappointing" given how high the bar is set. However, even if there will be some frustration about the sequel's box office, it might still make profit — although it would definitely take a lot of effort to be as historical as the original movie.

According to the first trailer of the sequel, we are going to dive deeper into the world of Pandora — quite literally, because the movie will focus more on the underwater scenery and will reportedly involve CGI even more mind-blowing than the original film had. The sequel's title is also rather telling, as the movie is named The Way of Water. However, plot details still remain a mystery.

Avatar: The Way of Water is set to finally premiere on December 16, after all these years of waiting. There are three more sequels planned by Cameron, scheduled for the releases in 2024, 2026, and 2028.