Over a decade after its release, Avatar will return this December with Avatar: The Way of Water, and the trailer for the long-awaited sequel is finally out. Check out the clip below.
Avatar: The Way of Water follows the Sully family, whose patriarch Jake (Sam Worthington) ended the first movie by leaving his human body to live as a Na’vi with his partner, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). As star Sigourney Weaver put it earlier this year, “The story is about family, about our families trying to stay together [and] the lengths to which we all go to protect each other and protect the place where we live.”
Worthington, Saldana, Stephen Lang, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Giovanni Ribisi, Dileep Rao, and Matt Gerald all reprise their roles from the original Avatar, while Weaver returns as a different character. Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, and Brendan Cowell join the cast of the sequel.
The Way of Water is slated for a December 14th international release and December 16th United States release. Since it’s been so long since Avatar‘s 2009 debut, ever-ambitious director James Cameron understandably has a lot of content he’s hoping to pack into the franchise’s next films. But while The Way of Water clocks in at around three hours, Cameron doesn’t want to hear any whining about its length: he recently told folks planning to see the sequel that “It’s okay to get up and go pee.”
Cameron has three more Avatar sequels planned after The Way of Water and revealed that Avatar 3 is already done. The third film is due out December 20th, 2024, while Avatar 4 is scheduled for December 18th, 2026 and Avatar 5 for December 22nd, 2028.