‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’: Original script had to be split into two films to avoid sacrificing anything

‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’ is already in theaters and the sequel directed by James Cameron exceeds three hours. But if that sounds like a lot, the director actually had enough material on his hands to fill double the time, which is why in the end the second episode only ended up including half of the ideas Cameron had for the film. sequel to the highest-grossing film of all time.

In an interview with Variety, screenwriters Rick Jaffa (“War for the Planet of the Apes”) and Amanda Silver (“In the Heart of the Sea”) reveal that when they started working on the screenplay for the first “Avatar” sequel, in 2013 with Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno, it didn’t take long to realize that there was too much material for a single film and that cutting it would be an impossible task.

The tandem explains that they communicated the problem to the director and Cameron agreed that all of the information was too important to sacrifice, so he decided to split the script in two.. This is where ‘The Sense of Water’ and ‘Avatar 3’ were born, shot one after the other to avoid the ‘Stranger Things’ effect, precisely because of this. “There was so much material that a bunch of whiteboards suddenly became a room full of whiteboards”recalls Jaffa about the process that began ten years ago. “There were chalkboards everywhere, and after those they flip over and you can write on the other side”.

Faced with these schedule changes, Jaffa and Silver went from being in charge of a film script to writing the screenplay for two. While Friedman deals with the fourth episode and Salerno with the fifth. At the moment, “Avatar 3” is 95% complete and its preview is guaranteed. The fourth film is partially filmed, while the fifth and the future of the saga beyond depends on the box office receipts of the first two sequels. If all goes according to plan, ‘Avatar 3’ will hit theaters in December 2024.

Unstoppable at the box office

There were many doubts about the interest that could exist around an ‘Avatar’ sequel 13 years after the original. But it turns out there was, and a lot. The film was released on December 16 anda crossed the threshold of 600 million dollars in worldwide grossing in just one week (via Deadline). At the time of writing, the global total is 609.84 million, all pointing to a very strong second weekend, with less of a decline than what current blockbusters like blockbusters usually suffer.

“The Water Sense” is doing particularly well internationally, with $426.8 million at the box office outside the United States. This already assumes the fifth highest international grosser of 2022, having surpassed ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ and ‘The Batman’ in just 7 days.