James Cameron doesn't want people to “whine” about the length of “Avatar: The Way of Water”.
The 68-year-old director’s highly anticipated sequel is set for release next month and the filmmaker doesn’t think people should complain about its 3 hour and 10 minute run time because so many TV viewers are willing to binge-watch entire series in one sitting.
He told Empire magazine: “I don’t want anybody whining about length when they sit and binge-watch (television) for eight hours,” he said. “I can almost write this part of the review: ‘The agonizingly long three-hour movie …’
“It’s like, give me a f****** break. I’ve watched my kids sit and do five one-hour episodes in a row.
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“Here’s the big social paradigm shift that has to happen: it’s okay to get up and go pee.”
Cameron admits the franchise has been “hideously expensive” to make – with an expected budget of around $1 billion for the four sequels – but he recently insisted the coming film will deliver “three hours of a pretty much insane experience”.
He said: “There are a couple of things that I took out (of ‘The Way Of Water’) that I want to shoehorn into movie three, hopefully.
“These are hideously expensive movies. It was a sketchy business case before the pandemic to make a movie that cost this much.
“At this point we just have to play it out to see what happens. But what I know right now is we’re delivering three hours of a pretty much insane experience.”
In September, Cameron admitted he was concerned that “'Avatar: The Way of Water” wouldn't be relevant over a decade after the original film was released.
He said: “I was a little concerned that I had stretched the tether too far, in our fast-paced, modern world, with ‘Avatar 2’ coming in 12 years later.
“Right until we dropped the teaser trailer, and we got 148 million views in 24 hours.
“There’s that scarce seen but wondered at principle, which is, ‘Wow, we haven’t seen that in a long time, but I remember how cool it was back then.’ Does that play in our favour? I don’t know. I guess we’re going to find out.”