Avatar: The Way of Water Hits Theaters Tonight

13 years of waiting. 192 minutes runtime. A budget of 350-400 million dollars. Another 500+ million as predicted global box office.

The numbers surrounding Avatar: The Way of Water can make you dizzy. The sequel to 2009’s Avatar (which remains the highest-grossing movie of all time, with only Avengers: Endgame coming any close) hits the US theaters on December 16, 2022, to see Jake Sully’s adventure continue.

The majority of Avatar’s cast is reprising their former roles, with Sam Worthington returning as Jake, Zoe Saldana as Neytiri, Stephen Lang as Colonel Quaritch, or CCH Pounder as Mo'at, the Omaticaya's spiritual leader and Neytiri's mother. Sigourney Weaver also stars, but her new character makes for a bit of a plot twist! The newcomers in The Way of Water cast include names as big as Kate Winslet and Michelle Yeoh.

Avatar: The Way of Water picks up over a decade after the events of the first movie. Jake and Neytiri, now leading the Omaticaya Clan, live in peace and raise their five children — one of which is Spider, a human child and Quaritch’s son. The idyllic existence is disrupted by a strange star that turns out to be an RDA spaceship, arriving at Pandora in another attempt to colonize the planet. The mission is led by Quaritch, or rather his clone placed in a Na’vi/Recombinant body; the Colonel, who died in the first Avatar, doesn’t remember his own demise, but he can well recall why he wants vengeance on Jake.

Avatar was aimed to be a first-of-its-kind, groundbreaking experience, and The Way of Water strives for no less: between top-class motion-capture filming and actors learning to free-dive for authentic underwater scenes, director James Cameron spared no effort and money to potentially set another box office record.

You can see Avatar: The Way of Water in theaters starting tonight! There’s no date for the VOD/streaming release yet, and no, we don’t know the role of Vin Diesel in the franchise either… but we’re intent on finding out whether it's just a rumor.