After a strong but surprisingly below-expectation opening weekend, Avatar: The Way of Water still made an impressive global $435M opening weekend. It won’t break any records but going by its hold over the weekend, it’ll likely have the legs any other James Cameron film has though just how far it’ll go remains uncertain. Still, the pressure is on as the film must make at least $2 billion to be profitable, at least that is what Cameron has shared in the past.
We never knew exactly just how big the budget was for the film, but it turns out that it’s far more massive than any of us could’ve imagined. Even Avengers: Endgame and its multitude of big-name stars had a production budget of around $300M. The CG-heavily film has a massive budget of $460M according to a new report by Deadline. That’s quite impressive and makes sense given they also filmed the first two sequels back-to-back.
The film’s budget is definitely impressive and there are currently no fears the film will perform incredibly well moving forward. It’s entering the holiday season where the normal day acts like a weekend. Presales factor about 20% for its post-release window and even Marvel averages around 5%. Cameron will likely do what he always does similar to what Top Gun: Maverick accomplished earlier in the year. Now, the only question remains: just how far will it go, and will it inspire Disney to go all in with Cameron‘s plans for the franchise?
Source: Deadline
