Will Avatar 3 be 9 hours long? Film length explained

Fans across the world are excited about Avatar 3 because of what James Cameron offered with The Way of Water. Despite its 3 hours and 12 minutes runtime, Avatar 2 made huge rounds at the global box office.

Studios have often kept mandates to keep movie run times close to 2 hours to ensure more screenings per day, but Avatar 2 proved that long runtimes don’t matter - if a movie is great, it will sell even if it’s around the 3-hour mark.

In the current era, people usually seek long-running theatrical event films when they go to a theater screen. And The Way of Water proved to be a visual spectacle with its over-the-top runtime. It did exactly what was asked out of it.

What has excited fans now is that Avatar 3’s run time could be around the same length.

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Is Avatar 3 going to be 9 hours long?

Avatar 2 characters (Image via 20th Century Studios)

James Cameron shot The Way of Water and Avatar 3 back-to-back. In fact, he even shot a bit of Avatar 4, but then switched to working on Avatar 2’s VFX.

Right after the second movie in the franchise hit theaters, The Hot Mic podcast host Jeff Sneider revealed that James Cameron’s current cut of Avatar 3 is 9 hours long. Sneider said:

"Someone reached out and said Cameron handed in a cut of Avatar 3 last week. The cut was, no joke, 9-hours long. And apparently, he's insisting on doing the VFX for this cut, so that all 9-hours get fully VFX'd, then he'll cut it down. Rather than figuring out what he wants and having them just do the VFX for that. That's what I heard."

There hasn’t been any confirmation of this report since the podcast, but it’s surely possible that James Cameron shot a lot of footage for The Seed Bearer.

Avatar: The Way of the Water (Image via 20th Century Studios)

Assembly cuts for all movies are usually pretty long. Even Zack Snyder's Justice League was said to have a 5-hour-long assembly cut. However, asking to have CGI done on the entire 9-hour cut could blow the budget out of proportion!

It must also be noted that there has not been any confirmation from official sources about the length of the film. So, for now, this report needs to be taken with a grain of salt, given that even Jeff Sneider did not provide any major source for it.

Avatar 2 already had a reported budget of $460 million before marketing. It has obviously repaid that money and turned in a sizable profit. But another expenditure of the same amount may not ensure similar results with The Seed Bearer. Cameron has got to find a way to cut some costs because it will surely be harder for Avatar 3 to rake in $2 billion again.

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Avatar: The Seed Bearer cast and release date

Avatar 3 stars Oona Chaplin (Image via 20th Century Studios)

The Seed Bearer is confirmed to bring back Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, Zoe Saldaña as Neytiri, Sigourney Weaver as Kiri, Stephen Lang as Recom Quaritch, Britain Dalton as Lo’ak, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss as Tuk, Jake Champion as Spider, Cliff Curtis as Tonowari, Kate Winslet as Ronal, Bailey Bass as Tsireya, and Filip Geljo as Aonung.

But James Cameron revealed that he would introduce a fire Na’vi clan, which is confirmed to be led by Oona Chaplin’s Na'vi character. David Thewlis and Michelle Yeoh are also expected to make their debut in Avatar 3, and they could be seen as a part of the Ash people.

Avatar: The Seed Bearer is set to release on December 20, 2024.