Avatar 3 9-hour cut teased, god help us all

If you’re eagerly awaiting the next Avatar film, you might change your mind after hearing this tidbit of news. Whisperings are still doing the rounds claiming that director James Cameron has handed in a nine-hour cut of the film. Let’s take a momentary silence for all of our future quivering bladders.

It’s no secret that Avatar: The Way of Water was a colossal success. You’d think that was a given based on the response to the first film, but Avatar was a franchise that lay dormant for well over a decade. If you approached someone in the street, many would say they’d seen it but would’ve perhaps been unable to name any key characters. Still, those of us who doubted Avatar’s cultural impression were proved wrong by The Way of Water going on to become one of the biggest films in box office history. That puts a lot of pressure on the as-yet unnamed Avatar 3 to match the success of its predecessors. It also sounds like Avatar 3 will put a lot of pressure on our butt cheeks. Stay with me on this one.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is out now.

If you get a numb backend just from sitting down to watch a three-hour film, just think how desperate you’d be to stand up after watching a nine-hour whopper. Apparently, that’s how long James Cameron’s original cut of Avatar 3 is. There is some good news though. It’s believed, and it’s common sense really, that the film will undergo major cuts in order to trim it down to something that more resembles a standard theatrical release, while insiders claim that an extended cut could end up on Disney Plus.

Earlier this year, insider Jeff Sneider said that the extended nine-hour version of Avatar 3 could debut on Disney Plus as a limited series. At least that way, we could watch the colossal version in digestible chunks.

That being said, it still sounds as if Avatar 3 is going to be the longest film in the series to date. The original Avatar clocks in at 2 hours 42 minutes, while The Way of Water ran for 3 hours 12 minutes. I’m sure Cameron has locked himself away somewhere, trimming down that nine-hour cut, but even to get it down to four hours long, you’d have to lose an enormous five hours of content. Let’s just say, I wouldn’t buy a large drink when you go to see the film.