James Cameron has laid out a mission plan ahead of the release of Avatar 2: to prove that the 2009 original won’t go down in the cinematic history books as “some big fluke.” Now, it seems the director has set his sights on Christmas of 2017 to launch the next chapter in his ambitious sci-fi universe.
Planning to shoot no less than three sequels simultaneously, the original release date of Avatar 2 was pushed to lend Cameron more time to flesh out the world of Pandora and its many moons. Nevertheless, late 2017 is now the preliminary milestone.
Cameron needs to cook up something special to maintain excitement across the entire trilogy.
If Avatar 2 does indeed nail down a Christmas 2017 release window, Avatar 3 and 4 will likely follow suit in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
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New Star Wars hits $1 billion
As expected, Star Wars: The Force Awakens hit the $1 billion mark at the worldwide box office today, toppling Jurassic World‘s record by doing so in 12 days. After breaking the Christmas Day record, the movie went on to gross an incredible $153.5 million at the North American box office this weekend, taking its domestic haul to $544.6 million.
Internationally, Star Wars: The Force Awakens took an extra $133.3 million over the weekend (Christmas is typically much slower overseas), giving it a haul of $546 million, and then a worldwide cume of $1.09 billion.
Analysts now seem sure that Star Wars: The Force Awakens will ultimately top Avatar‘s record of $2.7 billion, making it the highest grossing release of all-time. Regardless of whether or not that happens, $2 billion is pretty much a guarantee, and it should have no issue beating Avatar‘s North American total of $760.5 million.
What makes these numbers even more impressive is the fact that the movie has gone this high without the help of China. Had it opened there day and date like Jurassic World did, who knows how quickly Star Wars: The Force Awakens would have reached $1 billion.
