Avatar: The Way of Water | 16 DEC 2022 | Don't worry guys, critics like it

[WittyUsername]

21 minutes ago, Alexdube said:

 

Do they? Isn't that like saying Warner Bros owns Harry Potter and not JK Rowling?

Is there concrete evidence to support the idea that Avatar is owned by James Cameron, and that if he wanted to, he could take the franchise elsewhere? 

[Reddroast]

1 hour ago, Porthos said:

 

I have the tiniest, smallest, teeniest shred of sympathy for Disney here.  Incredibly tiny, mind, but there.

 

Disney has to market and hype up a ton of projects right now, juggling/balancing generating buzz for near, medium, and long term projects.

 

Gonna quote part of a convo I'm having with Cap off-thread over this:

 

 

I mean, it's just a True Point.  Disney has to market Marvel a lot.  It wants to promote D+ a lot.  Even if films are stuck in pre-productions, SW is still one of the crown jewels, and is a big driver of attention over on D+.  Then there are all of the other projects on D+, never mind upcoming animation projects.

 

Disney has its fingers in a lot of pies. 

 

This isn't to excuse it.  They should have gone nuts at Comic Con.  They should have followed it up with more than they did at D23. Hell, go with an Avatar Day again. But it is me saying, "Yeah, I can see why this is happening."

 

It's not a "civil war" inside Disney, IMO.  One doesn't commit to films through 2028 (and sink about a billion dollars in the process) and announce filming of the third of four sequels today if one wasn't fully committed.

 

I... I just think perhaps there's only so much attention/focus Disney can put out at any one time, and having so much to promote means some things aren't getting what they should.

 

I don't know if this is an unavoidable side effect of having Disney controlling so much IP, as opposed to rival studios.  But I do think that if Fox was either still around or bought out by a company without quite as much IP in-house (say, Comcast/NBC), then the promotion of A2 would probably have been more.. robust.

 

...

 

Probably.  After all, we also have no idea just how much James Cameron wants things promoted this time around. Or had stuff ready by, say, Comic Con.  It could just be a case of Cameron thinking, "Well, the remaster is right around the corner, I'll save the really good stuff for my fans then."  Or not. Who the hell knows?  Not me, that's for sure.

This is all true, HOWEVER this is an ongoing problem with this franchise. The only two things avatar has going for it are pandora at WDW and a CDS stunt show. There no major video games within 5 years of the original films release, ( there was no update on the upcoming game from the Ubisoft event today )if James Cameron and Lightstorm went to a Ubisoft ( or any othermajoe game development comapny) back in lets say in 2014 to make a high-quality game that expands the world of pandora it would have made so much goodwill for this movie.... But that never happened.

 

so here we are watching multiple companies mismanage what could be a generation-defining franchise as this clown show stared Long before disney bought rights

 

 

 

Edited September 11, 2022 by Reddroast

[Eric Prime]

29 minutes ago, Reddroast said:

The difference here is simple: Dr strange 2 was a much hyped-up summer blockbuster that made insane amounts of money ( even Though I contest they should have had a teaser with no way home.). THIS on the other hand is a re-release of a film they took off their streaming service in order to pull this off. (soon after David Zaslav went scorched earth on projects as well is not a good look imo).

Okay.

[Gavin Feng]

2 hours ago, Porthos said:

 

I have the tiniest, smallest, teeniest shred of sympathy for Disney here.  Incredibly tiny, mind, but there.

 

Disney has to market and hype up a ton of projects right now, juggling/balancing generating buzz for near, medium, and long term projects.

 

 

Agree. Also Avatar 2 don't don't necessarily need Marvel/SW level hype. It's more like another big original movie. Let the movie itself speak.

 

(Fanboy part of me is saying that if they spend so much money on A2 P&A, it could make other Disney projects look so meh and cause hurt.)

[Alexdube]

1 hour ago, WittyUsername said:

Is there concrete evidence to support the idea that Avatar is owned by James Cameron, and that if he wanted to, he could take the franchise elsewhere? 

Not trying to be a smartass but is there concrete evidence that Disney fully owns the intellectual property? 

Cameron famously sold the rights to Terminator for 1$, but that's a compromise he made to have his first real job as a director (Piranha 2 don't count). And that's something he regretted in a way because he didn't have control over the franchise and we know what happened after #2.

 

I can't imagine he would have negotiated the same kind of deal with Fox after directing something like Titanic, he doesn't have to sell his soul anymore. He must have retained some control over the IP. I'm not an expert on intellectual property but I don't think it's as simple as "Disney owns Avatar" in this case

 

 

Edited September 11, 2022 by Alexdube

[AnotherDayAnotherDollar]

1 hour ago, Alexdube said:

 

Do they? Isn't that like saying Warner Bros owns Harry Potter and not JK Rowling?

 

1 hour ago, WittyUsername said:

Is there concrete evidence to support the idea that Avatar is owned by James Cameron, and that if he wanted to, he could take the franchise elsewhere? 

 

All evidence points that Disney owns it through 20th Century. JKR owns some of the rights to Wizarding World. WB owns some other rights. There are some court document stating that all rights were transferred to Fox in the 90s or early 2000s IIRC. I can go through it in more detail if you want to DM me because I don't want to derail the thread, but ⓒ and TM for every single Avatar product in every media available that I have seen is to 20th Century (for example https://www.avatar.com/) . The same is split for Wizarding World (for example https://www.wizardingworld.com/).

[Eric Prime]

1 hour ago, AniNate said:

I think from D23's perspective it makes sense to throw some of their bones out for the general public and keep other things exclusive to the attendees. Maintains both the value of the event as a promotional outlet and the value of the admission prices.

Ding ding ding, we have a winner!

 

D23 has never ever been a convention where trailer after trailer drops. At least in terms of theatrically released movies. Disney+ is more liberal with trailer launches, but streaming services are a whole different ballgame when it comes to ad campaigns.

 

Anyways, it's always been one big trailer that gets released to the public (Little Mermaid, Rise of Skywalker, A Wrinkle in Time), then everything else is con-only, with only journalism tweets and the occasional still image or poster thrown in if Disney wants to give a little extra. And it makes perfect sense. Disney and their numerous projects are still getting talked about and trend on social media, so the normies can still pick up a few tidbits, Disney fans are still being shown hype stuff that gets that fandom excited, and it makes it easier to juggle every project, especially ones that are bigger priority at that point in time. Little Mermaid hasn't started its marketing campaign and Avatar already has. Avatar made a humongous splash in fact that got people excited and converted a few skeptics. A trailer specifically dropping on this specific weekend was not needed. And it's not even a Comic-Con thing where Avatar is nonexistent. It got its time.

 

And I know for some it stings that you aren't getting a trailer sooner or you think that this means Disney doesn't care about Avatar (which can we stop with this crap? You know damn well that's not the case), but The Quorum already shows there's a lot of hype with Avatar, amongst film nerds and the GA. It already has the highest Awareness, 65%, of any movie charted. In terms of Interest, it's third, still way ahead of almost every movie out there. People know it's coming out and people are excited. It'll make a ton of money, you're getting more sequels, Cameron's still gonna be rich. Chill.

[AnotherDayAnotherDollar]

9 minutes ago, Alexdube said:

Not trying to be a smartass but is there concrete evidence that Disney fully owns the intellectual property? 

Cameron famously sold the rights to Terminator for 1$, but that's a compromise he made to have his first real job as a director (Piranha 2 don't count). And that's something he regretted in a way because he didn't have control over the franchise and we know what happened after #2.

 

I can't imagine he would have negotiated the same kind of deal with Fox after directing something like Titanic, he doesn't have to sell his soul anymore. He must have retained some control over the IP. I'm not an expert on intellectual property but I don't think it's as simple as "Disney owns Avatar" in this case

 

 

 

On the flip side there's no way Fox would ever spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a property they don't own after they got played by Lucas with Star Wars.

 

I will take the burden of proof. Like I said above all C and TM are 20th Century Fox or 20th Century Studios. Can you find any property in any media for the Avatar franchise where C and TM are anything but 20th Century Fox or 20th Century Studios?

 

Quote

 

A decade later, in 2005, Cameron revisited the idea of making Avatar, and Lightstorm transferred all rights to the project to Twentieth Century Fox. 

 

 

https://www.scribd.com/document/124001146/Avatar-ruling

 

https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/cameron_msj_morawski_-_court_redacted__130205175009.pdf

 

Can you find any evidence that the rights have not been transferred?

 

That's not to say he doesn't have some control. He probably had the request to have creative control over the property for a specified period or as long as he is alive or something before transferring the rights, but the owner is 20th Century. Or Disney through 20th Century. As far as I can tell Disney has more ownership over Avatar than they do over Spider-Man. 

 

 

[Cap]

1 hour ago, Reddroast said:

The only two things avatar has going for it are pandora at WDW and a CDS stunt show.

 

I legit was just talking @Porthos about this tonight. 
 

my friend and I went to see Jaws and IMAX last weekend. When we walked out there was an avatar poster in the lobby. She said to me that she had never seen the movie. But she had to watch it, because she was going to Disney World this November and there was a ride there. So she wanted to know about the movie before she went on the ride. She did not say anything about the sequel.

 

And I would say that my friend is a pretty casual movie person. She’s definitely not a film buff. But she still goes to films all the time, and she’s definitely aware of pop culture. But I thought was really interesting, nothing about the seal. Just about the ride.

 

Moreover, I told Porthos that I am officially old. I have been part of an online and convention going fandom for 20 years. And in that 20 years, I can count on my hand the amount of occasions that I have run into Avatar fans. It’s like I said it way long ago during comic con. There is no cosplay. There is no fanfiction. There’s no fanart. There is no fan cam. Does not have a large online presence of people who could come out of the woodwork for this. As some others have said, we almost have to treat this like an original movie. And well I know that people are really excited cause Top Gun Only proved there is a way for an old property to make a butt load of money, there’s also as many examples of ones that haven’t. So I’d be very interested to see how this plays out, and how they are going to build real hype for the movie outside of like film Twitter, or outside of this forum.

[Porthos]

16 minutes ago, Cap said:

And well I know that people are really excited cause Top Gun Only proved there is a way for an old property to make a butt load of money, there’s also as many examples of ones that haven’t. So I’d be very interested to see how this plays out, and how they are going to build real hype for the movie outside of like film Twitter, or outside of this forum.

 

Legit, the ranges where this film could land, domestically, are CRAZZZZZZZZY wide.  

 

While this isn't what you were talking about, I do think it is legit popular in China, as there is a ton of anticipation/hype for it over there from nearly all casual reading I've done.  But, like, DOM?  Man, don't ask me.

 

The one thing interesting thing is, while it doesn't have many rabid fans... it doesn't have many rabid fans.  That is, it's a film that is thought of fondly and outside of internet snark more likely than not provokes an "Oh, yeah, I really liked that film — a sequel's coming out you say?  Cool."  That seems to be backed up by Eric's Quorum data that there's fairly strong (though obviously not universal as your friend shows) knowledge of the sequel coming out. 

 

But it doesn't have any of those fan wars/internal fan battles that have tripped up other franchises.

 

*cough*

 

In other words, there is likely to be a yuge untapped mine out there.  Only question is if it is tapped.

 

Kinda restating your points here, if from a different angle.

Edited September 11, 2022 by Porthos

[Cap]

17 minutes ago, Porthos said:

 

 

Kinda restating your points here, if from a different angle.

Absolutely. And I also feel like this is gonna be a really interesting couple months because expectations are so different. Like what if it does 75 million on opening weekend. Is that good or is that bad? I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad number, but I know that they’d be some people who would think the sky was falling. So what people are expecting out of this verse what’s gonna actually happen, first how everyone processes the information we get, is gonna be interesting. I don’t have an answer for it. I don’t have really any take on this movie and what it’s gonna do at the box office other than I just don’t think it’s as popular as people think it is.

[Porthos]

7 minutes ago, Cap said:

Like what if it does 75 million on opening weekend.

I send you an emergency care package in the mail, so you can have something to read/drink/watch while you deal with the fallout is what happens!  

[Cap]

11 minutes ago, Porthos said:

I send you an emergency care package in the mail, so you can have something to read/drink/watch while you deal with the fallout is what happens!  

Me:

 

[Eric Prime]

I mean 75M would be very bad considering the decade plus of inflation and coming a property that is recognizable and popular, even if Comic-Con folk don't talk about it religiously. Plus there's very clear data that awareness and interest are rock solid. And disregarding marketing, I don't think it's 100% necessary at this specific point in time for the casuals to know this movie's coming out anyways. Typically the last month or two in an ad campaign is the most crucial period to sell your movie and I am more than confident Disney will put out all the stops for a variety of reasons. I plain disagree with all this handwringing.

[M37]

1 hour ago, Cap said:

 

I legit was just talking @Porthos about this tonight. 
 

my friend and I went to see Jaws and IMAX last weekend. When we walked out there was an avatar poster in the lobby. She said to me that she had never seen the movie. But she had to watch it, because she was going to Disney World this November and there was a ride there. So she wanted to know about the movie before she went on the ride. She did not say anything about the sequel.

 

And I would say that my friend is a pretty casual movie person. She’s definitely not a film buff. But she still goes to films all the time, and she’s definitely aware of pop culture. But I thought was really interesting, nothing about the seal. Just about the ride.

 

Moreover, I told Porthos that I am officially old. I have been part of an online and convention going fandom for 20 years. And in that 20 years, I can count on my hand the amount of occasions that I have run into Avatar fans. It’s like I said it way long ago during comic con. There is no cosplay. There is no fanfiction. There’s no fanart. There is no fan cam. Does not have a large online presence of people who could come out of the woodwork for this. As some others have said, we almost have to treat this like an original movie. And well I know that people are really excited cause Top Gun Only proved there is a way for an old property to make a butt load of money, there’s also as many examples of ones that haven’t. So I’d be very interested to see how this plays out, and how they are going to build real hype for the movie outside of like film Twitter, or outside of this forum.

I do wonder if Disney/Cameron are miscalculating here, presuming a high baseline level of fandom (not on par with SW/MCU, but only a step or 2 below) that doesn’t really exist, at least domestically. Some softpeddling of the marketing, a rerelease (at least for now) almost exclusively in 3D, expecting the Avatar name to basically sell itself. Rather than going all out to reengage the audience from 13 years ago and also bring in potential new viewers 

Or perhaps, like Paramount with TGM, they’re confident they have a good product and WOM (plus holidays) will do a lot of the work on the backend 

 

After reading the above comment, I’m officially lowering my number. Stay tuned… 😉

 

[WittyUsername]

In the case of Top Gun, the original film has always been seen as a fairly iconic piece of 80s pop culture history, so right off the bat, the sequel had 80s nostalgia going for it. TGM basically managed to be Black Panther for Boomers. It’s the ultimate feel-good movie for people who long for “the good old days,” which is especially poignant in a post-COVID world. 

I don’t think an Avatar sequel will be able to rely on nostalgia, so its best bet will be to replicate what made the original film so successful; the immersive alien world. That was ultimately the big strength of the first one, which was why the 3D was such a big selling point. 

[AnotherDayAnotherDollar]

Was this posted? 

 

https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1568720097082068996

 

Landau thinks that Pandora is a place where you can tell an infinite number of stories. Mentioned they already have ideas for other stuff. 

Edited September 11, 2022 by AnotherDayAnotherDollar

[lorddemaxus]

3 hours ago, Cap said:

how they are going to build real hype for the movie outside of like film Twitter, or outside of this forum.

I feel like youre conflating online fanbase chatter too much with real hype. They don't need to get hype from online outside of film twitter when a film like Avatar reached such a wide audience. Like, my grandma from India has seen Avatar lol. I feel like main reason there's no online chatter is because the only material so far is one movie. I don't think I've seen an original movie with no sequels have a huge online fanbase presence.

 

And you're friend hasn't seen the first film. She has little reason to get interested in the sequel. And who knows? Maybe she'll like it enough when she sees it that she'll be excited for the sequel.

Edited September 11, 2022 by lorddemaxus

[Alexdube]

4 hours ago, AnotherDayAnotherDollar said:

 

On the flip side there's no way Fox would ever spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a property they don't own after they got played by Lucas with Star Wars.

 

I will take the burden of proof. Like I said above all C and TM are 20th Century Fox or 20th Century Studios. Can you find any property in any media for the Avatar franchise where C and TM are anything but 20th Century Fox or 20th Century Studios?

 

 

https://www.scribd.com/document/124001146/Avatar-ruling

 

https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/cameron_msj_morawski_-_court_redacted__130205175009.pdf

 

Can you find any evidence that the rights have not been transferred?

 

That's not to say he doesn't have some control. He probably had the request to have creative control over the property for a specified period or as long as he is alive or something before transferring the rights, but the owner is 20th Century. Or Disney through 20th Century. As far as I can tell Disney has more ownership over Avatar than they do over Spider-Man. 

 

 

 

I'll concede it's probably technically correct to say "Disney owns Avatar", although how much do you really "own" an IP if another party has creative control? I'd still be curious to see the detail of their arrangement

[IronJimbo]

7 hours ago, Eric-occhio said:

*Avatar 2 trailer is exclusive to Doctor Strange*

 

"wow this is so cool. it's nice to see it on the big screen before everybody else does"

 

*Avatar 2 trailer is exclusive to Avatar re-release*

 

"OMG DISNEY ARE ALL MORONS. THEY WANT THIS MOVIE TO DIE. CAMERON HAS TO LEAVE RIGHT AWAY FOREVER D:"

 

I swear some of you weirdos want to be annoying about this movie, jeez louise.

there's making a strawman, then theres making stuff up. You've just done the latter and called people weirdos while doing it.