Of course, since Disney still has Black Panther: Wakanda Forever on its slate for November, it can’t ramp up the marketing machine just yet. But, this hasn’t stopped details of the next Avatar movie from leaking out. For example, a listing states that Avatar: The Way of the Water will be 190 minutes long. 190 minutes doesn’t even come close to touching the record of Resan (The Journey) at 873 minutes, this does make the Avatar sequel one of the longest movies to premiere in a long time. Certainly, The Way of Water will be longer than 2009’s Avatar (162 minutes) and even 2019’s Avengers: Endgame (182 minutes) as well as The Batman (176 minutes), which came out earlier this year. With multiple listings confirming the length of The Way of Water, there’s genuine concern that this will affect its performance at the global box office. But, you won’t find the director, James Cameron, sharing similar sentiments. Cameron might be well aware of the risk that he’s taking with his plans for the Avatar franchise but he knows that people can very well spend hours just watching a single film. He previously mentioned how viewers can binge-watch shows “for eight hours” straight, even using himself as an example after doing “five one-hour episodes in a row”. If nothing else, the lengthy runtime of The Way of Water will guarantee more than enough chances to explore the story of the new family formed by Jake Sully and Neytiri following the conclusion of the first Avatar film. Avatar’s success in its re-release in theaters in September, Avatar 2 is poised to enjoy similar numbers. Speaking of Avatar, Ubisoft’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora won’t come out in time for the theatrical release of the sequel. Instead, the hope is for the open-world RPG to be ready for launch on or before the third Avatar film arrives.
