Avatar: The Way of Water director’s cut isn’t happening

James Cameron has done a lot of recutting movies. But it does seem like he is not afraid to do so. The Way of Water: Avatar won’t be getting that treatment, despite rumors to the contrary. However, Avatar 2Jon Landau producer says the film has enjoyed a dominating box office run since its December 16th release.

One of the inciting incidents for these rumors came from Cameron himself, saying how he’d like to make two versions of a movie in the future, a streaming version that runs six hours, and a theatrical version that’s closer to two hours. Landau offers clarifications and updates about an Avatar 2 director’s cut.

“I think Jim is seizing on opportunities for other stories with two different cuts — the idea would be that you build a larger, epic narrative that can last six hours, and you pull a two-and-a-half-hour movie out of it,” Landau told Polygon in an interview. What about? Water’s Way or 2024’s Avatar 3 getting extended cuts, Landau simply said, “We don’t have the amount of content to do that.”

ConsiderThe Way of Water: Avatar is such an effects-driven movie, it’s no surprise that there aren’t a ton of superfluous scenes that add to the movie. And anything additional that hasn’t already been worked on by the film’s CGI team would like take a lot of time and money to produce. Added to that, Avatar 2This movie is quite long at 3 hours 12 minutes. An extended version would be very close to the length of a miniseries.

Not because of the Avatar 2 director’s cut rumors have been squashed, that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from spinning up on the third movie already. Jeff Sneider, host of The Hot Mic podcast claims that Cameron submitted a rough cut of nine hours. Avatar 3He asked Disney for every VFX shot to be completed so that he could complete the entire picture. Even if that’s true, it seems highly unlikely that the final version of the third movie would clock in anywhere close to that, it is an interesting rumor that could certainly lend fuel to a future “release the Cameron Cut” fire.

Adding to this fuel is Cameron’s own history with director’s cuts, including AliensHe also added some crucial scenes to the film’s backstory, helping Ripley connect the story. But given Cameron’s track record of success, and The Way of Water: Avatar seemingly poised to take a run at the all-time box office crown, it’s hard to imagine anyone’s questioning James Cameron too much at this point.