After making $1.5 billion at the global box office, you’d imagine Avatar: Fire and Ash’s commercial performance would guarantee Avatar 4 and 5. But according to a new report, Disney is weighing up the franchise’s future, and may even cancel plans for an Avatar expansion at a theme park.
James Cameron’s special effects-heavy Avatar films cost a huge amount of money to produce, but they have historically made billions of dollars at the box office. 2009’s Avatar 1 remains the highest-grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation), and has earned a staggering $2.9 billion across several theatrical runs. 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water has earned $2.3 billion, meanwhile, cementing its place as the third-highest grossing film of all time.
Avatar: Fire and Ash, however, made $1.5 billion during its theatrical run (according to Variety, Disney spent $350 million to produce Avatar: Fire and Ash and roughly $150 million to promote it). While $1.5 billion is a huge amount for any movie to make, it’s some way behind its predecessors. So, has Fire and Ash done well enough to convince Disney to greenlight Avatar 4 and 5? Disney has given both sequels release dates already: Avatar 4 currently has a December 21, 2029 release date, with Avatar 5 due out December 19, 2031. Cameron, now 71, would be close to 80 years old by the time it all wraps up.
TheWrap reported that there are ongoing talks on how to make Avatar 4 and 5 cheaper and shorter than their predecessors so they are a less risky investment for Disney. But, according to the report, Disney has yet to make a call.
“It’s all about compare-and-contrast — Fire and Ash made half of what the first movie made.” Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore, told TheWrap. “And ticket prices in 2009 were not what they are in 2025. That’s the level that James Cameron and the Avatar films are operating in. When an $89 million domestic opening weekend and almost $1.5 billion worldwide would be seen — in any stretch — as a disappointment. That’s why there’s that perception. These are high-class problems to have.”
TheWrap also cast doubt over an Avatar-themed land at Disney California Adventure, which was set to be built this year. Retired Disney Imagineer Jim Shull, who spent over 32 years leading the creative design of rides and attractions at Disney Parks worldwide, commented: “The reality is that Avatar 3 did OK but as a cultural force, it’s exhausted. Nobody is demanding to see more. They like what they have and if they really like it, they can go to Florida and see it.
“California does not have a lot of land. If Avatar had been a huge success and people were demanding 4 and 5 and beyond, that would change the equation. But there’s not a lot of demand.”
The report tallies with recent comments from Cameron himself, who said Avatar 3 would need to make a lot of money, and he’d need to figure out a way to make Avatar 4 and 5 for less money in order to get the thumbs up from Disney. “Here’s the thing: the movie industry is depressed right now,” he explained. Avatar 3 cost a lot of money. We have to do well in order to continue. We have to do well and we need to figure out how to make Avatar movies more inexpensively in order to continue,” he said. “If we continue and we do 4, we also do 4 and 5 together. So we made 2 and 3 together, one big story. And then 4 and 5 is another big story.”
Cameron’s comments here echoed those he made in the run up to Fire and Ash’s release, when he admitted he was feeling nervous about the film’s box office performance and expressed concern about the “forces” working against theatrical releases. Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Cameron said there was potential for “sequelitis.”
“People tend to dismiss sequels unless it’s the third Lord of the Rings film and you want to see what happens to everybody, which in my mind this is — this is the culmination of a story arc, but that may not be how the public sees it,” he said. And there’s the “one-two punch” of streaming and Covid, which means fewer people are going to the movies — 75% of the number in 2019, Cameron suggested.
When pressed on how much Avatar: Fire and Ash cost to make, Cameron wouldn’t be drawn into divulging a figure, only suggesting it was a lot of money, and so the movie will have to make a lot of money to turn a profit.
“It is one metric f**k ton of money, which means we have to make two metric f**k tons of money to make a profit,” he said. “I have no doubt in my mind that this movie will make money. The question is, does it make enough money to justify doing it again?”
And on that point, Cameron admitted he was “absolutely” ready to walk away from Avatar if Fire and Ash flops. “I’ve been in Avatar land for 20 years,” he said. “Actually 30 years because I wrote it in ‘95, but I wasn’t working continuously on it for those first 10 years. Yeah, absolutely, sure. If this is where it ends, cool.” But what about open story threads? “There’s one open thread. I’ll write a book!” Cameron responded.
Last week, Avatar producer Rae Sanchini said Avatar 4 and 5 were in the planning phase. “Right now we’re figuring out the schedule,” she said. “We’re working hard on it right now, budgeting, scheduling, planning, building out our new pipeline for them. As far as we’re concerned, we’re full speed ahead.”
Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
