The success of Avatar 2 shows the post-pandemic return of cinema

The great success of Avatar: The Path of Waterthe sequel to the film James Cameron which is approaching $2 billion at the global box office, is proof that “movies are back with a resurgence” after the pandemic, the Canadian director said.

“We’ve had a year to see that this resurgence is not just a fluke, or just a movie,” Cameron told AFP this week in an interview in Los Angeles, pointing to other mega-hits like “Top Gun: Maverick” or ” Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”.

“There’s been a pattern,” Cameron added, after leaving his hands imprinted in cement at Hollywood’s famed TCL Chinese Theatre.

“Avatar: The Waterway” hits theaters 13 years after the original film, which remains the highest-grossing film of all time with a total gross of $2.9 billion worldwide.

Even if the sequel – which takes the action in three dimensions to a new underwater setting – doesn’t scale to the same altitudes, it’s already the seventh-biggest film of all time by ticket sales.

This undisputed success has helped reinvigorate the movie theater industry, battered by competition from streaming platforms and viewer apathy for the theatrical experience since the start of the pandemic.

In the United States alone, some 500 theaters have disappeared since the arrival of Covid-19, forcing costly closures, according to the National Association of Theater Owners.

Cineworld – the British group that owns the second-biggest theater chain in the United States, Regal Cinemas – is in the midst of a restructuring after filing for bankruptcy last year.

But Cameron, also a director of Titanic, The Terminator and many other successes, he remains firmly convinced of the viability and adaptability of cinema in the future.

“I don’t think movies are going to die,” said the director.

“We need this as a culture, as a society. We need to go to theaters, into these big spaces with hundreds of strangers.”