With virtually every production on hold in Hollywood, as well as the majority of movie theaters closed across the world, Disney announced a massive change to their release calendar, most notably delayed the Avatar sequels once again.
James Cameron’s long awaited sequels were expected to release every two years, with Avatar 2 supposed to release December 2021 after resuming production in New Zealand after a two month shutdown. The movie has now been bumped to December 16, 2022.
Consequently, this has changed the release of the other four sequels. Avatar 3 has been moved from December 2023 to December 20, 2024; Avatar 4 has been moved from December 2025 to December 18, 2026; and Avatar 5 will move from it’s December 2027 slot to December 22, 2028.
Disney is still sticking with their holiday release strategy, with all of the movies having a December release date. The studio is baking on the films to be an event for large groups of people to go to, which is expected with the original Avatar grossing over two billion at the box office and currently being the second highest grossing film of all time after being unseated by Avengers: Endgame.
This investment is looking rather risky now, with the original movie being released in 2009, it will be over 13 years till the sequel hits screens. Accompany this with the over 1 billion production budget of the sequels and the fact that the movie is not all that relevant in 2020, other than the sequels constantly being pushed back.
Disney and Cameron are banking on the state of the art visuals to entice viewers to see the pictures in droves, but we will have to wait another year to see.
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