Avatar: The Way of Water - a US$250 million sci-fi film largely made in New Zealand - is getting rave reviews and breaking box office records.
This is exciting for the thousands of local people who contributed to the movie, Hollywood producer Jon Landau tells Summer Times.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), directed by James Cameron. Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Collection ChristopheL via AFP
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Photo: © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation / Lightstorm entertainment
Avatar: The Way of Water - which is the sequel to 2009's Avatar - was filmed in both Auckland and Wellington, where the production office was based.
“It's thrilling for the hundreds of people, thousands of people actually who worked on the movie, because we're all in this together.”
The production of further Avatar sequels in New Zealand is progressing well, Landau says.
“Number three is slated for December of 2024. We have completed, mostly, all of our live action and performance capture, we have what we call virtual cameras, which is when we take the performances we captured and do virtual camera on them to create the shots - we have that work left to do.”
This year's Avatar has also earned more than anyone projected, Landau says.
“Just today I believe that we became the highest-grossing, post-Covid film ever. We're slated to break the $2 billion mark this coming weekend.”
The thrill of being part of a mega-hit like Avatar: The Way of Water is the reason he’s in the movie business.
“Why do we make movies? We don't make movies for ourselves, we make movies to entertain people. And the response at the box office tells us that that's what we're doing.
“I think it's one of Jim's [Cameron] greatest strengths as a director is that he's never lost that 16-year-old kid inside of him who would always go to the movies.
“When he sets out to do something, he really thinks about everything from an audience's perspective.”
The New Zealand government's screen incentives scheme is essential to the ongoing production of the Avatar films here, Landau says.
“We would not have come here on the first Avatar film but for the film incentive, and we would have had a big argument with people who were financing the movie to come back here on the second film if we said we wanted to, because we have a great experience with the crew, but there was no film incentive.
“The film incentive is critical. And one of the things that I think is great about what a film does for a community is the diversification of its spending.
“We're not just employing, 400 people on our shooting crew, but our caterer is going out and shopping at the local market to feed those people every day, we go into a stationery store and in a two-month period, we give them double their yearly business coming from a film, the hotel rooms, that we were able to take during a period where people weren't, we're not travelling.”
Working on a film as technologically groundbreaking as Avatar: The Way of Water provides people with transferrable skills, Landau says.
“I think people can leave the experience [of working on] an Avatar film and take what they've learned and apply it to other sectors.
“Because we're always pushing the boundaries, they're able to go into those sectors with an experience that few other people can have.”
Avatar: The Way of Water on RNZ:
'Avatar: The Way of Water' reviews vary wildly between critics