A whole lot has happened since a then-freshly elected President Barack Obama called 2009’s “Avatar” a “great flick” during his and Michelle Obama’s first-ever holiday message.
At the time, mentioning James Cameron‘s 3D megahit — which is the highest-grossing film of all time — during a public address seemed culturally relevant and, we’re not going to lie, very cool.
But in 2022 — after more than a decade and numerous delays — the phrase “’Avatar 2′ is finally coming out!” might elicit some groans.
And if this is you (or not, we know there’s still some Na’vi diehards out there) the teaser trailer for “Avatar: The Way of Water” may tempt you to dive back into Pandora once again.
The film, which will be released Dec. 16, will star many of the original film’s cast members, including Zoe Saldana as Neytiri, Sigourney Weaver in a new role and Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, per Variety. Joining the cast are Kate Winslet as Ronal, Michelle Yeoh as Dr. Karina Mogue and Oona Chaplin as Varang, among others. Cameron also told Variety in his “Directors on Directors”” conversation in 2021 that he combined the filming process for the first two sequels, plus “a little bit of ‘4.’”
“We mixed the schedules for ‘2’ and ‘3’ together, based on the types of scenes and the environments,” Cameron said. “I said, let’s just treat it like it’s a six-hour miniseries and we’re only going to go to Frankfurt once. We’re going to shoot all the scenes from ‘2’ and ‘3’ at the same time. That was more or less the motif.”
This means we might not have to wait another 13 years for “Avatar 3.”
As for “Avatar 2,” the new film picks up where the last left off, with Sully and Neytiri building a family in which one member appears to be a human living among the Na’vi. Plot details one could gauge from the trailer are thin — although some water-related war seems apparent.
Also, the “Avatar” font in the teaser trailer appears to be a more zhuzhed-up version of the original movie’s Papyrus font, which may or may not please Ryan Gosling.
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