It has been announced that James Cameron’s next Avatar film was going to come out this year, but since we haven’t had any updates (and films are getting delayed left and right), some thought that 20th Century Studios had delayed the return to Pandora. As it turns out, they haven’t, and the movie is still set to come out this year.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, 20th Century Studios head Steve Asbell was asked about the status of the Avatar sequel, to which he confirms that it will release in 2022. “For real. It’s going to blow people away. You’re not ready for what Jim [Cameron] is doing,” he adds.
Seeing as it’s been more than a decade since the release of Avatar, there is a lot of concern on whether 20th Century Studios will be able to build the hype up for the franchise again. To that, Asbell says that they are depending on the marketing team over at Disney. He says: “[Disney] will do an incredible job reigniting that passion for the original film… It’s less about Avatar being a really big movie and more about how Avatar was a really important cultural moment for audiences. I don’t think it will be hard to convince people to come back.”
We don’t know why James Cameron would suddenly want to come back to Avatar after all these years, but it’s possible that Avengers: Endgame beating his box office record could have something to do with it.
While I did enjoy Avatar at the time, the movie hasn’t managed to stick to pop-culture as strictly as Star Wars or Marvel did. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens when Avatar 2 comes out this holiday season.
