Could Avatar 2 flop at the box office?

“Who asked for this?” asked the New York Times in November of the coming Avatar sequel, The Way of Water. Not me. I’m not the audience for this film. I did not contribute to Avatar‘s $2.92 billion global box office. I don’t, for example, post in the “Tree of Souls” forum, which has 2,093 members (a tiny number).

Does Avatar have an army of fanatics waiting to be unleashed at the box office? I don’t know anyone obsessed with Avatar, do you? Is it as meme-friendly as Minions: The Rise of Gru? No. Will it draw as many teens as an MCU movie? Probably not.

Avatar does not have the built-in fanbase you need to carry a franchise. It requires a global audience — it needs mainstream buzz. It needs the press raving that it’s a “visual masterpiece.”

But is that enough?

Avatar: The Way of Water has a trailer with roughly forty million views. It generated this in thirty days on YouTube. By comparison, Taylor Swift’s video for “ME!” generated sixty-five million views in a single day. It’s a bad comparison, but all forty million views tell me is that moviegoers are curious about the film’s visual spectacle. The latest IMAX poster sells Avatar 2 as an underwater nature film.

The deep water visuals are the hook for a general audience, but most of the chatter around this film has focused on James Cameron saying ridiculous things in the press, e.g., telling trolls to “shut the fuck up.” The Twitter discourse around Avatar 2 centers on James Cameron’s quotes, not the film or its visual allure in 3D. Cameron has turned himself into an exhausted auteur with hot takes. He’s become a meme.

James Cameron says claiming that #Avatar has no cultural impact is an 'irrelevant argument'

"If people are less likely to remember Jake Sully [than] Luke Skywalker, that’s partly because Avatar [has] only one movie out … Marvel had maybe 26 movies to build out a universe" pic.twitter.com/A3tg1fzhNg

— ScreenTime (@screentime) December 1, 2022

Cameron recently told GQ that to break even, Avatar 2 has to be the “third or fourth highest-grossing film in history,” beating or at least matching the likes of Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($2.07 billion) and Avengers: Infinity War ($2.05 billion). This is what people care about: whether or not the film will make history — whether or not James Cameron will sink or swim. With a cost of production hovering near $450 million, with Disney spending north of $1 billion on the sequels, and Hollywood not yet fully recovered from the pandemic, this is James Cameron’s biggest test.

The film press is already going nuts, but will moviegoers?

“James Cameron once again shows filmmakers how it’s done. I’ve said it a thousand times. Never doubt him. ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ is how you do epic blockbuster-ing. Emotional, visceral, and as big as movies get.” https://t.co/WYVBFMC2DZ

— Variety (@Variety) December 6, 2022

The debate over Avatar’s lack of “cultural footprint” (whatever that means) is irrelevant when you’re talking about the box office. Disney dads don’t do close readings of 3D movies. They flock to carnival attractions and let the visuals melt over them. Cameron needs to sell them tickets. I don’t think he’s done that, personally, but Disney has made sure that Avatar 2 is the only show in town, i.e., there’s no competition at the box office this holiday season. There are no tentpoles or superhero blockbusters set to debut. Nothing from the MCU or DCU. The rereleased Top Gun: Maverick will run until December 15, the day before Avatar 2 premieres. The only noticeable Christmas movie is Violent Night — which had a solid opening weekend — but by December 16, nobody will care. A24’s The Whale is too arthouse. The Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody would have to outperform Bohemian Rhapsody to even make a dent.

Cameron’s competition at the box office does include a potential sleeper hit: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, a sequel to Puss in Boots (2011), which made $34 million on its opening weekend — 51 percent of which came from 3D screenings. Puss in Boots is a 3D film. This is only important because Avatar 2 will probably do big numbers in 3D (about 93 percent of the Avatar rerelease audience saw it in 3D).

Remember Minions: The Rise of Gru? It had a ridiculous $125 million opening weekend. It showed us that nobody knows anything. Even though Puss in Boots is positioned to avoid Avatar’s opening weekend (releasing on December 21), DreamWorks has something Disney animation does not: positive prerelease buzz. Puss in Boots has a 98 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s also a family-friendly animated film — the only one other than Avatar 2.

I’m not saying Avatar 2 is a Disney-animated film, but for the sake of argument, the last Disney animated film to hit theaters was Strange World, which recently bombed at the box office. Variety reports that Strange World could lose Disney at least $100 million. Avatar 2 is entering a holiday marketplace that doesn’t love Disney animation. Every ticket counts when the threshold for success is $2 billion, which only five films in history have hit (two of them James Cameron films).

Avatar 2 is tracking to open for between $150 and $175 million domestically, which is a big number, but Cameron is banking on Avatar 2 to do extremely well internationally, especially in China, which could help him justify additional sequels.

But again, how hungry are moviegoers for an Avatar sequel?

The recent rerelease of Avatar made $30 million globally on its opening weekend ($20.5 million internationally). This is an impressive number for a rerelease. The 2021 rerelease in China made close to $58 million. James Cameron needs China to maintain his title as “Box Office King.” He just does; the stakes are too high. Spider Man: No Way Home ($1.9 billion) could have made $2 billion if it was released in China.

But with the pandemic shrinking China’s box office (down between 30 and 40 percent), and zero-Covid protests still happening, Avatar 2‘s box office in China is a question mark. Could China ease Covid restrictions before December 16? Who knows? But $2 billion: that’s the number Cameron says he needs to hit. It’s a crazy number. Only two films have made $1 billion since the pandemic: Top Gun: Maverick and Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Iceberg, right ahead?

Avatar: The Way of Water premieres globally on December 16.