The holiday movie season is nearly upon us. And this year, Hollywood is bringing audiences something really special. It’s the gift they have been waiting years to receive. Thirteen years to be exact. This December 16th, director James Cameron is finally releasing Avatar: The Way of Water. Cameron’s journey to bring the sequel to his original film, Avatar (2009), the highest-grossing film of all time, to the big screen has ballooned into one of the largest undertakings in the history of Hollywood. Never before has a director devoted so much time, energy, and money into a film on this scale with expectations this high.
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Some box office predictions are betting that The Way of Water will not exceed the grosses of the first Avatar. Even if they’re right, the fact remains: The Way of Water will take in a whole lotta money this Christmas. Movie theaters will be slammed with butts in seats. They will meet a level of demand that would be difficult enough to supply in normal times. And these are anything but normal times for cinemas.
After the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns in 2020, industry-wide labor shortages amidst blockbusters like Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022), and a looming popcorn shortage in the supply chain, the question feels more dire than ever: are movie theaters prepared for the release of Avatar: The Way of Water this December?
The 13-Year Wait For The Way of Water Could Hinder Its Financial Success
20th Century Studios
To capture a coming-of-age story in real time, Richard Linklater shot Boyhood (2014) one month out of the year for 12 years. Linklater’s commitment to the film won him the respect of critics. When it comes to the sheer scale of the Avatar sequels, James Cameron even has Linklater beat.
According to The CDC, the average adult male lifespan in the United States is now 75.1 years. James Cameron began writing the script for the first Avatar in 2006 and has since spent a total of 16 years on the franchise so far. This means Cameron has devoted approximately 21% or one-fifth of his entire life to telling the tale of blue cat-like people from another planet. By the time Avatar 3 comes out in 2024, providing its release date does not get pushed ahead any more than it already has, that figure jumps to around 23%. Nearly a quarter of the man’s life. For blue cat people.
Cameron is something of a Box-Office Whisperer with an unmatched career which includes Titanic (1997) and the Terminator movies, bringing his combined total grosses to $6 billion. But even he admitted recently that The Way of Water is facing a ton of pressure to crush the box office in its first few weeks like the original film. Cameron told the Associated Press, “Anyone who says they don’t get nervous before a movie drops is a lying son of a (expletive).” And the filmmaker has raised some legitimate concerns that the market may have shifted a little too far beneath his feet in the 13-year gulf between Avatar and The Way of Water.
The Way of Water Will Enter a More Competitive Market Than the First Avatar
Marvel Studios
Of course, Cameron is correct that the film and television market has become a different animal since 2009. Today, Disney’s Marvel films and content from streaming platforms have become the 800-pound gorillas of the filmmaking industry. Netflix CEO Reed Hasting told Bloomberg News back in 2009 that he predicted the company would still be mailing out DVDs until 2030. Actually, Netflix still does mail out DVDs.
Iron Man (2008) had only been released one year prior to Avatar. Back in 2009, the public was generally unaware of any plans for a Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not even Iron Man director John Favreau or its stars Robert Downey Jr. and Jeff Bridges conceived that a series of loosely connected sequels, prequels, and crossover films based on characters from classic comic books would ever become such a cash cow.
In spite of this changing market, recent developments suggest that Cameron’s “big bet” on The Way of Water is going to pay off big time. Only a week after the filmmaker’s anxious interview with the Associated Press, the first Avatar film was re-(re)-released to a $30 million opening weekend, racking up the film’s total worldwide gross to $2.85 billion. The film also dethroned Avengers: Endgame (2019), which sits just shy of $2.8 million; the two films have had a tug-of-war for the highest-grossing film of all time. So it appears that cinemas are in for “an Avengers-level threat” this December.
Cinemas Might Not Be Prepared After Spider-Man and Top Gun
In 2020, Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns led to a patchwork of reopenings across the US. Each state eased the return of cinemas at a different pace. Texas waited about a month after the initial lockdown in March of 2020, allowing up to 25% capacity at first. Washington state reopened movie theaters for just two weeks in September 2020. Then closed again until re-reopening in January 2021. This patchwork of reopenings led films like Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020) to tank at the box office, along with public fear of returning to cinemas.
When movie theaters eventually did reopen in 2020 and 2021, they had to compete with simultaneous streaming releases. Marvel’s Black Widow (2021) was available to rent on Disney+ on the same day as it hit theaters. Disney+ rentals brought in $60 million against a $158 theatrical opening, meaning that nearly 40% of the total opening gross was made online. The movie theater industry didn’t see a dime of that $60 million, leading to a high-profile lawsuit from the film’s star Scarlett Johansson. Though the suit was settled privately last year.
Upon reopening, cinemas also faced the same historic labor shortages that have plagued much of the private sector to this day. Understaffed theaters across the country struggled to keep up with the soaring demand from the two films, which were hailed as the post-pandemic “Return of Cinema:” the holiday hit Spider-Man: No Way Home, which took in $1.9 billion, and the long summer success of Top Gun: Maverick which took in $1.4 billion.
Many movie theater employees took to TikTok to voice their frustration at the state of the industry, like this one cleaning up after a rowdy screening of No Way Home:
To top all this off, there is now a popcorn shortage in the supply chain looming over the release of Avatar: The Way of Water. What’s next? A lightbulb shortage for the projectors? A 3D glasses shortage?
So if you’re tearing your hair out at home with the in-laws over the holidays and you don’t know what to do other than go see the new Avatar movie to get Uncle Carl to shut up about the government for a couple of hours, be a little patient if the line for concessions is going out the door. And give the high school kid scooping your popcorn a break. She’s likely working the toughest shift of her young life.
