Avatar Superfans Are Calling on Each Other to See Fire and Ash Multiple Times in the Theater to Help Boost Its Box Office — but Not Everyone Is on Board With the Idea

As Avatar: Fire and Ash rumbles on at the box office and it becomes increasingly clear that James Cameron’s sci-fi epic won’t come close to matching the enormous amount of money Avatar 1 and 2 made, some superfans of the franchise are calling on each other to return to the theater for a repeat viewing — although others aren’t thrilled with the idea.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is now up to $1.319 billion worldwide after five weekends ($363.5 million domestic and $955.3 million international). Writer and director James Cameron is yet to signal that Avatar 4 and 5 are definitely going to happen, as box office watchers wonder whether Fire and Ash has done well enough to convince the powers that be at Disney to move ahead.

The special effects-heavy Avatar films cost a huge amount of money to produce, but they have historically made billions of dollars at the box office. 2009’s Avatar 1 remains the highest-grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation), earning a staggering $2.9 billion across several theatrical runs. 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water has earned $2.3 billion, meanwhile, cementing its place as the third-highest grossing film of all time. Fire and Ash looks like it will top out at around $1.5 billion.

But the bigger question is whether it will end up doing well enough to convince Disney to greenlight Avatar 4 and 5. Disney has given both sequels release dates already: Avatar 4 currently has a December 21, 2029 release date, with Avatar 5 due out December 19, 2031. Cameron, now 71, would be close to 80 years old by the time it all wraps up.

Now, some fans are mobilizing. One issued a call to arms on reddit in a thread titled ‘Pandora needs us (this is not a drill).’ The thread, upvoted 1,300 times, saw redditor Silver-Squirrell call on their fellow fans to watch Fire and Ash multiple times if possible.

“If you love the Avatar franchise — which I’m sure everyone in this community does — consider seeing Fire and Ash more than once in the theater,” they said. “Actually, please see it at least twice. Heck, bring a sibling or a friend.

“If I had to choose, I’d say Avatar: Fire and Ash is my favorite out of all three movies. It’s got everything I loved about the first and second movie and more. So, I’m sure I speak for a lot of us when I say I want to see it do really well in the box office. Especially with talks of Avatar 4 and 5 depending on this movie’s success.”

Then, in a final plea to the 1 million-strong Avatar subreddit community, Silver-Squirrell said: “Maybe this post won’t make that much of a difference to the final box office numbers, but then again, maybe it will. As they say, every dollar counts. Every little bit adds up to a lot.”

The response from the community is mixed, with some saying they think Avatar 4 and 5 will happen regardless. Others are answering the call, saying they will indeed go see the movie again. Some have said they simply can’t afford to go even once, tapping into the “depressed” theatrical business, as James Cameron himself has put it. As one fan put it:

“Honestly, this is probably partially why the movie isn’t doing as well as the other two. Like it’s still dominated the box office and is sitting pretty high on the list of highest grossing movies as is, but I think people are finding it harder to justify seeing the movie once let alone more than once with the cost of everything else these days.”

In response to that, some Avatar fans are offering to pay for strangers’ tickets. One fan who said they couldn’t afford to see Fire and Ash at all in theaters saw support from a number of people in the community who said they wanted to help out. “I’m serious I’ll buy you the ticket,” said 0nlythebest. “Everyone should be able to enjoy the movie!”

Another fan in the UK actually posted an image of a ticket they had bought to see Avatar 3 in their local theater, offering it up to anyone who fancied it. “I just bought a ticket to help the movie get to top 10 box office,” they said.

Not everyone is reacting well to this community drive. Some have called for fans to stop panicking over Avatar 3’s box office, pointing out Disney is the last corporation that needs “help” from fans. “Oh we have so lost the plot,” said one. “Sorry but a multi-billion dollar media franchise does not NEED help from us,” said another. “If a movie doesn’t get a sequel after $1.5 billion then the whole system is beyond broken.”

James Cameron recently said Avatar 3 would need to make a lot of money, and he’d need to figure out a way to make Avatar 4 and 5 for less money in order to get the thumbs up from Disney.

“Here’s the thing: the movie industry is depressed right now. Avatar 3 cost a lot of money. We have to do well in order to continue. We have to do well and we need to figure out how to make Avatar movies more inexpensively in order to continue,” he said.

“If we continue and we do 4, we also do 4 and 5 together. So we made 2 and 3 together, one big story. And then 4 and 5 is another big story.”

Cameron’s comments here echo those he made in the run up to Fire and Ash’s release, where he admitted he was feeling nervous about the film’s box office performance and expressed concern about the “forces” working against theatrical releases in 2025. Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Cameron said there was potential for “sequelitis.”

“People tend to dismiss sequels unless it’s the third Lord of the Rings film and you want to see what happens to everybody, which in my mind this is — this is the culmination of a story arc, but that may not be how the public sees it,” he said. And there’s the “one-two punch” of streaming and Covid, which means fewer people are going to the movies — 75% of the number in 2019, Cameron suggested.