It’s been more than 12 years since the release of James Cameron’s Avatar, but we’re finally hearing rumors about the ETA of a first trailer for its long-awaited sequel.
Set to be one of the biggest new movies of 2022 – nay the decade – Avatar 2 is scheduled to arrive in theaters on December 16, though we’ve seen reports suggesting we could get a first look at the sci-fi epic in tandem with the release of Doctor Strange 2 on May 6.
The Ankler's Jeff Sneider claims that Disney hopes to debut the first trailer for Avatar 2 during screenings of the upcoming Marvel movie in the hope of drumming up interest in both Disney-backed projects.
Of course, there’s been no official confirmation of the trailer date from 20th Century Studios (the subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios handling the production of Avatar 2), and a May 6 arrival would mark an unusually early look at a movie not set to release until seven months down the line.
That being said, audiences have waited long enough for a return to Pandora. Avatar 2 has faced delays unlike any other movie in history, having originally meant to release in 2014, and it’s going to take an almighty marketing campaign to plant the movie back on the radar of moviegoers across the globe.
What’s more, the Avatar/Marvel buddy strategy fits. Even if Sneider’s suggestion about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is off, we’d still wager that the trailer for Avatar 2 could arrive alongside another Marvel Phase 4 project, Thor: Love and Thunder, on July 8.
In either case, we’re confident we may get a first look at James Cameron’s sequel in the next few months.
As for what we might see in a first trailer for Avatar 2, the jury is out. We know that Kate Winslet will feature in the movie alongside returnees Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang, but details surrounding its plot are thin on the ground.
Being a big-budget Cameron project, though, we’re expecting big things. The 2009 original marked a groundbreaking leap for special effects, and its sequel is rumored to feature equally boundary-pushing underwater performance capture sequences.
It’s Disney’s world, we're just living in it
It’s easy to forget that Avatar 2 now falls under the Disney umbrella. In 2019, the world famous entertainment studio completed the $71.3bn acquisition of an equally giant brand, 20th Century Fox – a move that brought franchises including Alien, Planet of the Apes and, of course, Avatar under Disney control.
The latter is a particularly interesting case, given that Disney now owns the rights to future instalments of the highest-grossing movie of all time. To date, Avatar has raked in over $2.8 billion worldwide, and its history book supremacy has only been threatened on one occasion – by Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame in 2019 (Avatar has since been re-released and regained the number one spot).
Of course, Disney also owns Marvel Studios. That means, Titanic notwithstanding, the Walt Disney Company currently lays claim to five of the six most successful movies of all time (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Avengers: Infinity War and Spider-Man: No Way Home make up the latter places).
If Avatar 2 replicates anything close to the performance of its predecessor, then, Disney is on track to further solidify its position as the dominant force in Western popular culture.
Your move, Apple.
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