James Cameron stunned the world withAvatarback in 2009, and despite waiting more than a decade to release his first sequel,Avatar: The Way of Waterbecame one of the highest grossing movies of all time very quickly. It seems that the appetite for the world of Pandora and the ecologically-fused story of the Na’vi has not abated now that the movie is streaming on Max and Disney+. According to new figures released byNielsen, theAvatarsequel completely dominated the world of streaming in June with 1.9 billion minutes watched in its first five days on release.
The closest challenger for Cameron’s epic came in the form ofNetflix’s revival ofManifest, which reached its dramatic conclusion after the release of its final ten episodes, but even that fell massively short ofAvatar: The Way of Water. Others making up the top five wereS.W.A.T, Never Have I EverandArnold Schwarzenegger’s first major TV projectF.U.B.A.R, which continued to prove that despiteAvatar 2taking the title, Netflix are still the real winner when it comes to streaming. Out of the June top ten, Netflix had claim on 7 of the entries, as can be seen below.
For Cameron, this is just another reason to believe that his future planned sequels to theAvatarstory will all be nothing short of huge money-spinners, and will help him secure his place as the one of the most successful filmmakers ever. With so many movies having failed to make back their excessively high budgets,Avatar: The Way of Waterneeded to be one of the biggest movies of the last decade to be financially successful and it managed it with ease.
Related:Zoe Saldaña Has Perfect Reaction to What Avatar Delays Mean in Terms of How Old She Will Be At The Franchise’s End
The Avatar Story Will Not Be Complete For Almost a Decade
James Cameron originally revealed that hisAvatarsequels would be released every couple of years starting in 2024. However, the last few months have seen many productions hit roadblocks caused by the WGA writer’s strike, and with an impending actor’s strike also still a possibility, Avatar’s story will take a lot longer to tell than first thought.
The latest delays, which have affected multiple franchises, have seenAvatar 3pushed back from its original 2024 release to one in December 2025,Avatar 4fall back from 2026 to 2029 andAvatar 5slide from 2028 to 2031. This is something that has already been addressed by Cameron, producer Jon Landau and stars such as Zoe Saldaña, who joked about how old she is going to be when the final movie finally rolls out.
Of course, if there arefurther strikes, or delays caused by industry shortages, another unexpected medical crisis or anything else that could possibly befall the beleaguered world of movie making, thenAvatar’sstory may end up taking even longer to tell. Hopefully for everyone involved, that is not the case.
Avatar: The Way of Water, and the originalAvatar, is available to stream now.
