In order to make Avatar: The Way of Water, director James Cameron and his team had to come up with new cameras, mo-cap technology, and algorithms to translate his vision to the screen. But reinventing the wheel takes money—lots and lots of money, according to the filmmaker, who spoke to GQ for an expletive-laden Monday profile. When asked just how expensive the sequel was, Cameron replied, “Very fucking.” (Early, unconfirmed reports have pegged the budget at around $250 million, according to Variety.) The 68-year-old told GQ that he’d approached studio executives to tell them the Avatar sequel, which originally aimed for a 2014 release, represented “the worst business case in movie history.” Having apparently crunched the numbers on his own time, Cameron estimates the film will have to be “the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.” Of course, that’s not out of the realm of possibility; unadjusted for inflation, Cameron’s original 2009 film holds the top spot for highest-grossing film worldwide, with $2.9 billion raked in. Besides, as he told the magazine, he relishes a challenge: “I like difficult. I’m attracted by difficult. Difficult is a fucking magnet for me.”
