How Many Avatar Movies Are There (and When's the Rest Coming)
In short: There are three Avatar movies: Avatar (2009), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025). Two more are scheduled, Avatar 4 on December 21, 2029 and Avatar 5 on December 19, 2031, which James Cameron plans as the end of the saga. Watch them in release order, which is also story order.
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- Avatar (December 2009, 162 minutes). Jake Sully, a paralysed former Marine, is sent to Pandora to infiltrate the Na'vi through a remotely controlled avatar body, and ends up fighting for them against the mining company that sent him.
- Avatar: The Way of Water (December 2022, 192 minutes). More than a decade later, Jake, Neytiri and their children leave the forest and shelter with the Metkayina, a reef clan, when the humans return.
- Avatar: Fire and Ash (December 19, 2025). Continues directly from The Way of Water. The family, grieving, meets the Ash People, a Na'vi clan who reject Eywa, and the war widens.
- Avatar 4: December 21, 2029.
- Avatar 5: December 19, 2031.
Release order and story order are the same. There are no spin-off films to fit in, although the video game Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is set in the same world.
Box office so far
- Avatar: about $2.9 billion, still the highest-grossing film of all time, without adjusting for inflation.
- The Way of Water: about $2.3 billion, third on the all-time list behind Avatar and Avengers: Endgame.
- Fire and Ash: about $1.49 billion ($404 million in the US). A big hit, but the lowest of the three.
Why the sequels take so long
Cameron shoots the films in large, overlapping blocks, and much of the work on later sequels happens years ahead of release. That keeps the child actors' ages consistent across films and lets each film push the technology, such as the underwater performance capture built for The Way of Water. The cost is long gaps: four years between Fire and Ash and Avatar 4.
The plan has also grown. Avatar began as a single film, became a four-film plan, and grew to five. When the studio questioned adding more sequels, Cameron says he asked: "What part of you getting another chance to make $2 billion is in question here?"
Will there be more than five?
Cameron has mentioned ideas for a sixth and seventh film, but nothing beyond Avatar 5 is confirmed. He has also said he can't keep making Avatar films indefinitely, so any later films would likely have another director.
Should you rewatch before the next one?
Yes, if you can spare the time. The films lean heavily on the Sully family's relationships and losses, and the gaps between releases are long. The three films together run about nine hours. If you only have time for one, rewatch Fire and Ash, since Avatar 4 picks up its threads.
More franchise watch orders: the Narnia movies, the Fast and Furious films and Tom Holland's Spider-Man films.
Another big-screen spectacle is coming in November: Godzilla Minus Zero, the sequel to the Oscar-winning Minus One, shot for IMAX.
Frequently asked questions
Is Avatar connected to Avatar: The Last Airbender? No. James Cameron's Avatar and the Nickelodeon animated series are unrelated and just share a word.
Where can I stream the Avatar movies? The first two are on Disney+. Fire and Ash joined Disney+ on June 24, 2026. Catalogs can vary by country.
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