It’s almost like a bad joke. What movie can open to $134 million and still fall below expectations?

Avatar: The Way of Water!

Seriously, this movie has such a big budget – somewhere in the ballpark of $350 to $400 million, never mind the promotion costs – that James Cameron himself says it has to be ‘the third or forth highest grossing film in history‘ to break even, never mind make a profit.

Which means, based upon Cameron’s estimate, that Avatar: The Way of Water has to pull in at least $2 billion, seeing that the forth highest grossing film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, made $2,070 billion while Cameron’s own Titanic pulled in $2.202 billion.

If you ask me he has reason to be concerned because what we’re going to likely see from now are are declining returns for the Avatar sequel.

The question is just ‘how much’ of a decline, not the decline in and of itself.