Avatar: The Way of Water’s runtime has seemingly been confirmed, and it will be one of the longest movies of the year. Per AMC Theater’s showtimes, Avatar 2 will be 192 minutes – or three hours and 12 minutes – long.
This makes it 30 minutes longer than the original movie, which was 162 minutes when it was first released in 2009. In an exclusive interview with Total Film magazine, which features Avatar on the cover, James Cameron explained the lengthy runtime.
"The goal is to tell an extremely compelling story on an emotional basis," he said. "I would say the emphasis in the new film is more on character, more on story, more on relationships, more on emotion. We didn’t spend as much time on relationship and emotion in the first film as we do in the second film, and it’s a longer film, because there’s more characters to service. There’s more story to service."
- James Cameron had "too many great ideas" for Avatar: The Way of Water, so the cut content became Avatar 3 which "will actually be a little bit longer" than its 3-hour predecessor
- James Cameron says that Avatar 3 will make "brave choices" even if that means the audience going "f*** that's not what I signed up for"
Despite running for over 3 hours, Avatar 2 still won’t be Cameron’s longest film to date. Titanic still holds that record at 194 minutes long.
The long-awaited sequel to Avatar picks up with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Ney'tiri (Zoe Saldana) as they raise their family in Pandora. However, a war against humans wages after an ancient threat resurfaces.
Almost all of the original cast is back, including Sigourney Weaver, CCH Pounder, and Stephen Lang. They’ll be joined by Avatar newcomers Kate Winslet, Jack Champion, and Edie Falco. We got out first proper look at the characters in the latest Avatar 2 trailer.
Avatar: The Way of Water will be released on December 16, 2022. For other upcoming films, check out our guide to movie release dates.
