Fans are eagerly waiting for the highly-anticipated Avatar: The Way of Water. Meanwhile, the director James Cameron reveals that he may be leaving as director. Cameron released Avatar in 2009, which broke both domestic and global box office records, and while he originally promised a trilogy, he ultimately planned on four more sequels. The filmmaker has recently opened up about the franchise in a wide-ranging interview with Empire, where he admitted he might not direct Avatar 4 and Avatar 5.
Cameron also confirmed that Avatar 2 will be quite long while advocating for bathroom breaks. After several years of development, Cameron shot both Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar 3 back-to-back, with both performance capture and live-action photography happening on and off between August 2017 and September 2020. However, fans were convinced that Cameron would be the director for all four sequels, but now it seems that may not be the case anymore.
In the interview, Cameron teased, “The Avatar films themselves are kind of all-consuming. I’ve got some other things I’m developing as well that are exciting.” “I think eventually over time, I don’t know if that’s after three or after four, I’ll want to pass the baton to a director that I trust to take over, so I can go do some other stuff that I’m also interested in. Or maybe not. I don’t know,” he admitted.
Since both Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 were filmed back-to-back, the plan for Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 was to film them back-to-back as well. If he does hand the last two films off to another filmmaker, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s done so. Cameron had been developing Alita: Battle Angel for years, based on the Gunnm graphic novel series, though he ultimately handed that off to director Robert Rodriguez, with the film ultimately released in February 2019.
The first Avatar movie was of two hours and 42 minutes, with the director admitting that fans should be prepared for another long movie with Avatar: The Way of Water. While the official runtime has yet to be revealed, he’s already getting prepared for critics to complain about the seemingly-length film. “I don’t want anybody whining about length when they sit and binge-watch [television] for eight hours,” Cameron said.
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