James Cameron says he cut 10 minutes of gun violence from ‘Avatar 2’

WASHINGTON: The three-hour running time of James Cameron’s much anticipated “Avatar: The Way of Water” has been talked about quite a lot, but that hasn’t stopped the movie from dominating box office rankings worldwide.

According to Variety, the movie would have run 10 minutes longer, according to director James Cameron, who recently spoke with Esquire Middle East. The director claimed that fetishism no longer interests him.

According to Variety, James Cameron said, “I actually cut about 10 minutes of the movie targeting gunplay action.”

He added, “I wanted to get rid of some of the ugliness, to find a balance between light and dark. You have to have conflict, of course. Violence and action are the same things, depending on how you look at them. This is the dilemma of every action filmmaker, and I’m known as an action filmmaker.”

Variety reports that Cameron earlier said, “I look back on some films that I’ve made, and I don’t know if I would want to make that film now. I don’t know if I would want to fetishize the gun, as I did in a couple of ‘Terminator’ movies 30-plus years ago, in our current world. What’s happening with guns in our society turns my stomach.”

“I’m happy to be living in New Zealand where they just banned all assault rifles two weeks after that horrific mosque shooting a couple of years ago,” Cameron added.

Meanwhile, with USD 855 million (equivalent to INR 7,000 crore) in worldwide ticket sales after 10 days in theatres, Disney and 20th Century’s high-budget epic ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ has become the fifth-highest grossing film of the year.

According to Variety, James Cameron’s long-awaited sequel has so far brought in USD 253.7 million domestically and USD 600 million overseas.

The ‘Avatar’ sequel is anticipated to generate significant box office revenue in the near future, despite the severe winter weather in North America and the rising rates of COVID, RSV, and the flu worldwide.

Variety reports that the USD 350 million budgeted film hopes to surpass the USD 1 billion mark by the end of the year.

Only two other movies in 2022 have been able to surpass it: ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and ‘Jurassic World Dominion.’

According to Variety, the highest-grossing country outside of North America for ‘Avatar 2’ has been China, with USD 100.5 million, followed by Korea (USD 53 million), France (USD 52.3 million), India (USD 37 million), and Germany (USD 35.7 million).

However, as per Variety, there are a number of reasons why the sequel will find it difficult to match the success of the first movie, which brought in USD 2.97 billion globally, making it the highest-grossing picture in history.

For starters, the global box office hasn’t entirely recovered from the pandemic, and significant markets like China are seeing the infection reemerge. Additionally, the sequel won’t be seen in Russia, where the first movie made USD 116 million.