Another Movie Guide

Avatar – The Phenomenon, Action Figures, Blu-ray and Sequels

By now we all know a lot of the reputed headline figures for the phenomenon that the James Cameron movie Avatar has become. The film started breaking records almost from day one of release, with $27 million taken on its opening day and $77 by the end of its opening weekend at the box office in the US. The figures were also pretty impressive around the rest of the world with over $20 taken in the opening weekends in both Russia and France and over $10 in the likes of the UK, Germany and a few others.

From the opening weekends the film just kept on growing, amassing staggering box office figures around the world. So, if you haven’t seen the film with the blue dudes in it yet you are apparently in the minority!

As well as the general world population taking a shine to the rather impressive movie, it had a fairly good showing at the Academy Awards where it was nominated for a whopping 9 awards and ended up scooping 3, though not the major ones.

Not surprisingly, along with anything that gathers this level of buzz there is a lot of merchandise out there to allow avid fans to show their allegiance to the movie. In December 2009 toy giants Mattel announced a range of Avatar Action Figures. These action figures each come with a unique weapon or accessory and a character specific i-Tag that you can scan with a webcam and then do things online. McDonald’s also put out a range of action figures in their Happy Meals.

With Avatar becoming history, what’s next? Well, Cameron always had plans for a sequel – two in fact.

The first sequel is starting to gain some media coverage, though apparently both Cameron and producer Jon Landau will be busy for a while overseeing the production of additional material to go with the various special Blu-ray editions of the movie that are still to come. Eventually a 2-hour ‘making of’ will feature amongst other goodies. The standard Avatar is due for Blu-ray release on 22nd April, so not far off now, allowing you to get another fix before details of the sequels become more firm.

Both Cameron and Landau admit it shouldn’t be as difficult to make another Avatar, though Landau is quoted as saying ‘… we know that whatever movie he [Cameron] does is not going to be done in six months’ so I guess we’d better not get our hopes up too soon. However, the storyline from the first movie left loads of opportunities to follow it up, so here’s looking forward to what they come up with next.

Marlin is a keen fan of all things geeky and also co-owner of the Action Figure Search and Browse engine http://www.actionfiguresearch.com. Amongst the action figures featured there are Avatar Action Figures.