While Avatar fans waited more than a decade for James Cameron to finish his sequel to the 2009 megahit, cast member Edie Falco apparently thought it came out years ago — and flopped.
The actor, who plays a hardened general in Avatar: The Way of Water, made the revelation during a recent visit to the talk show The View.
“This second Avatar — the one that’s coming out — I shot, I think, four years ago,” Edie told the panel. “And then I’ve been busy, I’m doing stuff, and then somebody mentioned Avatar. I thought, ‘Oh, I guess it came out and didn’t do very well,’ because I didn’t hear anything.”
“It happens,” she said, adding that she only recently learned the Avatar sequel was finally hitting cinemas.
But her confusion wasn’t unwarranted.
Avatar 2 was originally slated for release in 2014, long before Edie was even cast in her exoskeleton-wearing role as General Ardmore, according to ScreenRant.
It was then slated for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2020. It finally hit cinemas last Friday — to huge success.
The Way of Water has already grossed more than $500 million (£412 million) worldwide, per Deadline.
Edie, who famously starred in HBO’s The Sopranos, told The View that she still hasn’t seen the fantasy spectacle — and had originally hoped to portray one of the Na’vi aliens.
“Well, I wanted to be blue,” she explained. “I was excited — I was going to be blue and very tall. … I didn’t get either of those things. But I did get that exoskeleton, and that was pretty darn cool. All of this is so out of the realm of anything I’ve ever done!”
James Cameron recently told IndieWire he started writing all four sequels to 2009’s Avatar in 2013.
He said huge technical hurdles had to be overcome to properly motion-capture the actors, film scenes underwater, and bring the fictional planet of Pandora to life.
As for Edie, the Emmy-winning actor jokingly told The View that her release-date flub might get her in trouble: “I will never work again because I said that.”
