"Disney Shifts Release Dates for 'Avatar' and Other Big Franchises"
Key Highlights :
Avatar: The Way of Water may have finally arrived in theaters in 2022, but the long parade of delays for the Avatar franchise isn't done yet. The Walt Disney Co. on Tuesday pushed the release of Avatar 3 a year, bumping it from December 2024 to December 2025, and the timeline is stretched even further for the next planned installments. Avatar 4 is now slated to hit theaters in December 2029 and Avatar 5 is set to arrive in December 2031. If those dates hold, the Avatar film series will have stretched across the first four decades of the century.
In addition to shifting the Avatar release dates, Disney also remade the calendars for some of its biggest franchises, including Star Wars and Marvel. Two Star Wars films are now planned for 2026, with one pushed from December 2025 to May 2026 and another added for December 2026. The Marvel calendar was also remade, with “Avengers: Kang Dynasty” postponed from May 2025 to May 2026, and other films shifted a few months. From Disney’s 20th Century, another Alien film is now on the calendar, dated for August next year, and Deadpool 3 will debut May 2024 instead of November next year.
Director James Cameron, who launched Avatar in 2009, has said he may not direct films 4 and 5. By December 2031, the 68-year-old Cameron would be 77. Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water have collectively made more than $5.2 billion at the box office. “Each Avatar film is an exciting but epic undertaking that takes time to bring to the quality level we as filmmakers strive for and audiences have come to expect,” Avatar producer Jon Landau wrote on Twitter.
Disney's decision to shift the release dates of Avatar and other big franchises is indicative of the uncertainty of the movie industry due to the pandemic. While the studio is hopeful that audiences will be able to return to theaters in the coming years, it is taking a cautious approach and planning for the long term.
