You might want to purchase the bucket size popcorn and large soda before you feast your eyes with fantasy world of James Cameron’s film, “Avatar : The Way of Water,” sequel will clock in at a whopping 3 hours, 10 minutes, just shy of half an hour longer than the 161 minutes original, and just four minutes shorter than Cameron’s own 194 minutes film “Titanic”.
Even though Disney hasn’t released an official runtime as yet, the length of it came up when the film received its official PG-13 rating and exhibitors started inadvertently listing the running time on their websites.
Three of the high profile films, like “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” clocking in at 161 minutes and Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” clocking in at 188 minutes almost the same as “Avatar.”
During a recent interview with The New York Times, Cameron revealed that 20th Century Fox execs wanted to trim down Avatar‘s run-time by removing a key sequence, but he refused to budge.
Some of the original cast will be back for Avatar 2 including Sam Worthington as Jake Sully and Zoe Saldana as Neytiri. Also coming back will be Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang (whose death in the first will have been explained), Giovanni Ribisi, CCH Pounder, and Joel David Moore.
New additions include Kate Winslet and Cliff Curtis.
“I think I felt, at the time, that we clashed over certain things,” said the legendary filmmaker. “For example, the studio felt that the film should be shorter and that there was too much flying around on the ikran — what the humans call the banshees. Well, it turns out that’s what the audience loved the most, in terms of our exit polling and data gathering. And that’s a place where I just drew a line in the sand and said, ‘You know what?
I made ‘Titanic.’ This building that we’re meeting in right now, this new half-billion dollar complex on your lot? ‘Titanic’ paid for that, so I get to do this.
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“Avatar: The Way of Water” opens in North America on December 16th with the film scoring a global rollout that weekend.