At this point, James Cameron can probably start charging filmmakers to place his hand on the final cuts of their projects in order to bless them with his magic touch, because that touch is the only logical explanation for this man’s box office dominance at this point.
Imagine feeling the very essence of a blockbuster so deeply in your soul, that you can put out the first entry in your new franchise in 2009, have it make nearly $3 billion, only to disappear for 13 years before popping back up with the sequel, which then makes $2.3 billion. That, dear friends, is the Avatar magic.
And it seems the outrageousness of both Cameron’s commitment to the franchise and its success has reached a brand new height because the Avatar mastermind recently had to debunk a rumor claiming that he turned in a nine-hour rough cut of the upcoming Avatar 3; a claim he confirmed was false per Temple of Geek at the Saturn Awards just weeks ago.
There is no nine-hour rough cut! If I ever… No, what I said was it’s nine hours of material, meaning Avatar 3, Avatar 4, and Avatar 5. That’s, you know, 3 hours a movie. Somehow that turned into a nine-hour… Can you imagine?
What’s fascinating about this, though, is that the pop culture zeitgeist has grown so accustomed to Cameron’s audacious approach to filmmaking, particularly with the Avatar franchise, that something as drastically unthinkable as a nine-hour cut of a single movie was something that many were just ready to believe Cameron actually pulled off. That, in some way, is a sign of respect, even if that respect probably wouldn’t manifest in as many ticket purchases had the nine-hour cut actually been real.
Avatar 3, which will not be nine hours long, is set to release in theaters on December 19, 2025. The fourth and fifth films, meanwhile, are due on December 21, 2029 and December 19, 2031, respectively.
(featured image: 20th Century Studios)
