Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

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This movie will do great business. $1.8B - $ 2.3B WW (gross outside this range will surprise me).

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It is very plausible that the overall budget is 700-800 mil, if the production budget alone is 400 million.

So yeah 1.5-1.8 billion box office total is just going to be a middling outcome for this film, if even that, since about half of that goes to movie theaters.

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LelekPL wrote:
November 23rd, 2022, 6:53 pm
It doesn't have to make 2 billion. That's nonsense. Nobody would give anyone a billion
dollars to make a movie, not even Cameron.

Cameron just said:
“you have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.
He most likely meant domestically, not globally. So it probably needs to make about 700 million in America to be profitable. Which makes sense - a 350 or 400 million dollar movie with marketing is believable.

It might not make that much in America but with revenue from global markets it will definitely be profitable.

The article is just misleading.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 235268699/
The Way of Water‘s production budget is one of the priciest in Hollywood’s history, and is in the $350 million to $400 million range, according to sources.
Just as I said, the 2 billion break even point was nonsense. Considering studios keep around 60% of box office and let's say it has a marketing budget at a record 200 million, so the maximum break even point is 900 million at the Box Office. That is maximum. It most likely is at around 800 million range, though.

That is still huge but definitely doable for Avatar. I think it will earn over a billion. I'd say somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 billion. Which will still be a huge drop from the first film (around 50%) because it no longer has that "novelty" of 3D to rely on (unlike 2009, 3D isn't completely gone from cinemas now. It's far less popular but still some movies use it). But that still would make it a huge money maker.

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Thanks, I guess I won't take the director seriously next time when he says stuff like this.

I don't really care about box office anyway, since it's not actually a mark of quality in any case. Lots of great films never made their budget back and lots of trash got to have big box office numbers. What people tend to talk about later though are films they actually thought were great. Still can't believe the bland first film made as much money as it did but the flipside of course is that noone's been talking about that film since it came out because it left the cultural zeitgeist (mainly because it wasn't very good) and I am not sure the sequel can be lightning in a bottle.

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James has put significant resources (time, money) into making this sequel based on original film he created from scratch. I understand that there are a number of things that irritate / infuriate people (delayed release, lack of footprint, long absence of Cameron).

These are legitimate criticisms. But if someone calls this movie theme park ride but does not see the same problem with Dunkirk then they need to get their head examined. Both movies are natively shot with special cameras and demand to be properly exhibited. And atleast Avatar had proper story structure - Dunkirk is only an experiental film, totally scattered and little payoff.

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The box office for this is going to make Top Gun: Maverick look like Movie 43.

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Imagine Nolan having that kind of dedication to something.

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blackColumn wrote:
December 1st, 2022, 12:11 pm
Imagine Nolan having that kind of dedication to something.
What are you on about?

(Imagine if Nolan had the dedication to make 6 sequels....?)

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