James Cameron Doesn’t Want Avatar 2 Seen By Your Kids

James Cameron says Avatar 2 is not kid friendly, and goes so far as to compare it to The Sopranos.

By Douglas Helm | Published

James Cameron is bringing us back to Pandora this December with his sequel to 2009’s AvatarAvatar: The Way of Water. However, Cameron also doesn’t want you to bring your kids along to the theaters, as he told Total Film (via Variety) “People say, ‘Oh my God, a family story from Disney? Just what we want…’ This isn’t that kind of family story.”

James Cameron elaborated further on what kind of family story Avatar: The Way of Water will be, saying “This is a family story like how The Sopranos is a family story.” If this is true, then Cameron is right — definitely not one for the kids. As incredible as The Sopranos is, it’s pretty safe to say that no one would want to show their kids what Tony Soprano and the rest of his New Jersey crew get up to.

James Cameron also talked about how Avatar: The Way of Water is going to run for a whopping three hours and ten minutes. So you might want to think twice about getting that large soda before heading into the theater, especially with all the water that’s going to be on the screen. This means Avatar: The Way of Water is 30 minutes longer than our first trip to Pandora and will be Cameron’s second-longest film after Titanic.

This film has a lot riding on it, so fans will need to come out in droves to ensure the future of the franchise. Although James Cameron has plans for three more sequels, the box office performance of Avatar: The Way of Water is going to determine if those sequels get made. It has been over a decade since we’ve seen the first film in the franchise, so there’s always the chance that people won’t be interested.

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From the Avatar: The Way of Water trailer

Still, if you were to make a bet on the film’s success, it seems pretty unlikely that the film is going to bomb. James Cameron had one of the most successful films of all time with the first Avatar and that was when it was a brand new IP. The sequel is now a known quantity and has years of hype behind it.

We don’t have much longer to wait to see the next phase of James Cameron’s Avatar plans. The sequel picks up quite a few years after the original, with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) raising a family of their own and facing a familiar threat that endangers their family and home. Judging by the trailer, we’re in store for plenty of spectacle and a visual feast of top-notch effects, along with the family dynamics Cameron promised in his interview.

James Cameron is once again behind the camera for Avatar: The Way of Water, along with co-writing the script with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana star again, along with Sigourney Weaver (as a new character this time around), Kate Winslet, Michelle Yeoh, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, Edie Falco, Jack Champion, Jamie Flatters, Bailey Bass, Oona Chaplin, Jemaine Clement, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, Chloe Coleman, CCH Pounder, and Matt Gerald. You can finally return to the world of Pandora when Avatar: The Way of Water comes to theaters everywhere on December 16.