Avatar 2’s producer, Jon Landau, was present at this year’s CinemaCon to present the film’s first trailer for the Disney panel. Landau confirmed that the Avatar sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, will come out in December, as previously announced. Landau also explained that all four of the previously announced sequels are “standalone” movies. Finally, Landau adds that Disney plans on re-releasing the original Avatar in cinemas on September 23. 2009’s Avatar is the highest-grossing film in history with $2.8 billion made at the global box office and it appears that Disney wants to keep it that way. According to The Way of Water’s director, James Cameron, the team “wanted to push the limits of what theaters can do,” effectively encouraging audiences to watch the sequel in theaters once it premieres later this year. Those in attendance described the fully 3D teaser trailer as action-filled with plenty of Na’vi. Also, Disney released an official synopsis, setting the stage for the long-gestating follow-up. It reads: “Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, Avatar: The Way of Water begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.” At the same event, Disney confirmed that the first trailer for The Way of the Water will come out in theaters ahead of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Avatar 2 is the first of four planned sequels set to release a few years apart from each other for the next decade. The upcoming movie faced production delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Cameron eventually finished filming in late 2020, giving audiences a taste of what to expect in December. With the scripts and much of the work for the next three films already done, the third, fourth, and fifth installments shouldn’t take longer than a decade to arrive. Of course, all this depends on how well Avatar 2 does among audiences once it sets sail on December 16.
