It isn’t often you hear that a director loves that their movie was beat out by another but that isn’t the case when it comes to James Cameron’s thoughts on ‘Avengers: Endgame‘ unseating ‘Avatar‘ as the King of the Box Office. In fact, Cameron shared that this change gave him “a lot of hope.”
While you might wonder how that makes any sense, you have to think about how different the movie experience is these days due to the rise of streaming and high-quality screens at home. However, the famed director went on to share:
“Avengers: Endgame is demonstrable proof that people will still go to movie theaters. The thing that scared me most about making Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 was that the market might have shifted so much that it simply was no longer possible to get people that excited about going and sitting in a dark room with a bunch of strangers to watch something.”
Between Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and the skyrocketing prices of movie tickets, it does seem harder with each passing year to imagine that these box office records can continue to be broken. We know that the next film in the ‘Avatar’ franchise is due to be released on December 17th, 2021 and it feels after how long it has been since the first film that it could be hard to capture that kind of magic again. While both ‘Avatar 2‘ and ‘Avatar 3’ will be released, the final two installments to Cameron’s epic story will only be put into production by Disney if the upcoming two do well on the big screen.
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Cameron also added:
“Will Avatar 2 and 3 be able to create that kind of success in the zeitgeist? Who knows. We’re trying. Maybe we do, maybe we don’t, but the point is, it’s still possible. I’m happy to see it, as opposed to an alternate scenario where, with the rapid availability, custom-designed experience that everybody can create for themselves with streaming services and all the different platforms, that [theatrical potential] might not have existed anymore.”
As a fan of watching a truly cinematic experience that is often found in the comic book, science fiction, fantasy, and horror movies, I am one of the fans who love that watching these features on the big screen is still popular. This is apparently exactly why Cameron continues making movies:
“I’m just glad it still exists because I’m all about the big screen. Not that I wouldn’t do something for streaming where you can get into the characters in a different way but what I love the most to do is to create that completely kind of subsuming experience where you turn off your phone, and you engage. You, as an audience member, engage for two hours or two and a half hours, whatever it is. And that still exists!”
Well said.
Are you at all surprised at Cameron’s thoughts on losing the highest-grossing film in history title to ‘Avengers: Endgame’? Do you feel there is any chance ‘Avatar 2’ will even be able to come close to these box office numbers let alone surpass them? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: Deadline
