Believe it or not, Avatar: The Way of Water has already made over $1.4 billion at the global box office. What's even more unbelievable is that this figure still isn't enough for the film to be considered profitable for the Mouse House. The good news is Avatar 2 is much closer to breaking even and turning a profit than expected.
James Cameron previously revealed that Avatar 2 needs to gross at least $2 billion to break even but Variety notes that the actual figure is much closer. It reports that Disney needs the Avatar sequel to gross $1.5 billion, which is $500 million less than what Cameron previously claimed and just a hundred million more dollars away from the film's current box office take.
It's unclear why Cameron said $2 billion but he could very well have been considering other factors. Even if Avatar 2 only needed to gross $1.5 billion to be a financial success, Disney likely needed a much larger sum to okay the rest of the films in the pipeline. Keep in mind that there are at least three more sequels planned following Avatar 2 and most of them are expected to be equally expensive.
