How Many Avatars are Too Many?

When James Cameron announced at CinemaCon this week that he planned to produce four sequels to Avatar over the next seven years, the revelation was met by many not with breathless excitement, but with concern that Avatar overkill might be a bad idea. The original film is currently the highest grossing film of all time worldwide, but is it necessarily a reliable foundation for a five-film franchise?

Cameron told the CinemaCon audience that his plan for the franchise includes four sequels to be released in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023. He says that he has been working with a team of screenwriters to create a broad world based on the original film, complete with characters and situations that provide fodder for future stories.

It's been seven years since the release of Avatar, and the release date of Avatar 2 has already been pushed back a year from December of next year to December of 2018. If the first sequel manages to hit that new date, it will have been nine years since the release of its predecessor. By that time, it might be difficult for audiences to remember what they loved so much about all those big, blue CGI characters all those years ago.

Even recently hot franchises like The Hunger Games have had trouble maintaining audience interest over the course of multiple sequels, and Avatar's single film has no way to prove that its huge success was anything more than a one-time fluke. Unlike a franchise like Star Wars, which has been the subject of significant fan interest and creative output continuously over the many years since its inception, Avatar has not, and the expectation that the world will respond to a ready-made Avatar franchise seems to be coming out of a vacuum.

All four Avatar sequels may be gigantic hits, but, then again, they may not. Cameron is willing to take a multi-billion-dollar gamble to find out.