The long-awaited second Avatar film, now officially titled Avatar: The Way of the Water, generated a lot of hype on the internet. People can’t wait to see how this movie builds on the foundation laid by the 2009 movies Avatar. However, this hype made people wonder about the film’s budget.

What is Avatar: The Way of the Water in regards to?

In his cover of Avatar 2 presentation at CinemaCon, Deadline quoted Jon Landau as saying, “At the center of each of the four sequels will be the Sully family…Each story will stand on its own and each will come to its own conclusion.”

He is also quoted as saying that there will be a “satisfactory resolution to each film, but seen as a whole, the journey through all four will create a greater epic saga”.

Per Deadline, the movie’s tie-in line describes Sully’s new life on Pandora and how she was uprooted by a “familiar threat.”

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) lives with his newly formed family on the planet Pandora. Once a familiar threat returns to finish what was previously started, Jake must work with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and the army of the Na’vi race to protect their planet.

How much did Avatar: The Way of the Water cost to manufacture?

The budget for Avatar: The Way of the Water was a popular topic of discussion. In 2017, 21st Century Fox executive chairman Lachlan Murdoch spoke about the film’s budget at Variety’s Dealmakers Breakfast.

During this breakfast, Murdoch said that the Avatar the sequels had a “collective budget expected to exceed $1 billion” before saying “these will be the most expensive films of all time”.

That would mean that each movie costs $250 million to make if all the movies cost roughly the same amount.

And while it’s not fully confirmed, it’s the number that many outlets, including Collider, operate with.

East Avatar: The Way of the Water most expensive movie of all time?

While $250 million is a huge amount of money, in the age of Hollywood’s skyrocketing costs, it doesn’t go as far as you might think. On top of that, there can be discrepancies when discussing movie budgets. The numbers may include or omit different production elements. Moreover, the nature of inflation means that a million dollars in 2009 is not economically equal to a million dollars today.

Currently the original Avatar holds the Guinness World Record for the most expensive film ever produced, with an official budget of $425 million. However, this number is often heavily debated. As people wonder if the film marketing budget and the cost of developing 3D cameras and VFX equipment should be included in the film budget or if it is an unrelated expense.

However, if you use the figure Fox gave for the film in 2009, which is a much smaller $237 million, Avatar lose first place. In fact, with this number, Avatar is only the 22nd most expensive film of all time. With the years 2011 Pirates of the Caribbean: Fountain of Youth taking first place with a budget of $379 million.

Avatar: The Way of the Water won’t be the most expensive movie ever made if current numbers are correct. However, this assumes that the initial estimates were accurate and that the COVID-19 pandemic did not result in increased costs. We won’t know until the official financial documents are filed.

Avatar: The Way of the Water releases December 16.