Avatar: The Way of Water’s Brand New Epic Trailer & Bite Sized Facts.

In the leadup to the highly anticipated release of Avatar: The Way of Water on December 15, an even more exciting, moving, purely magical new trailer has been released. Check it out below, along with some bite-sized facts you might not know about the upcoming epic underwater cinematic adventure.

It was filmed in New Zealand.

Among other locations such as California, one of the key filming locations for Avatar: The Way of Water was the beautiful Wellington, New Zealand - a fact many Kiwis are proud to announce!

James Cameron Took Underwater Filming To The Next Level.

James Cameron hired the world’s best breath-hold specialists, with which the cast underwent incredible training to make the spectacular extended-take scenes possible. Kate Winslet blew the cast and crew away when she held her breath for a mind-blowing seven minutes, Sigourney Weaver got to six and a half minutes, and Zoe Saldaña clocked in at five minutes - simply unbelievable.

The film is so emotional it brought it’s own cast members to tears.

Zoe Saldaña was brought to tears after viewing 20 minutes of footage from the film. Stephen Lang also shared that he was teary-eyed when reading through his character arc. This really demonstrates the true emotional depth of the film, and how attached the cast are to their characters.

A new tribe and a new setting will be introduced.

Incredible new imagery has been released showcasing glimpses of some of the spectacular scenes we will see in the film on the big screen this December. The images, along with scenes from the trailer, show that not only are we going to be taken from Pandora’s rainforests to their divine and pristine oceans, but we will also meet a brand-new ocean tribe. The tribe are different in appearance to the Na’vis we are familiar with from the first film.

The teaser trailer garnered nearly 150 million views in its first 24 hours.

Audiences couldn’t be more excited to enter the gorgeous underwater world of Avatar: The Way of Water, and the numbers show it. Clearly the time has only further fuelled the public’s anticipation, with people flooding into cinemas to watch the re-screening of the original over recent months.

It has been a long wait since the first epic science fiction blockbuster, Avatar broke the box office and won the title of the highest grossing film of all time in 2009, but with technology only having advanced over the last 13 years, and all the incredible work that has gone into the creation of the sequel, audiences know they can expect to be absolutely blown out of the water.

The Avatar franchise has a mega budget of $1 billion.

20th Century Fox gave James Cameron and his production company, Lightstorm Entertainment a whopping $1 billion to produce the second, third, fourth and fifth film in the Avatar franchise.

Some characters from the first film will come back from the dead.

It is rumoured that certain characters who passed away in the original film will be returning in Avatar: The Way of Water, including both friends and foes. We won’t give away how or who, but this should be an emotional and interesting reveal!

It has an incredibly long run time of over 3 hours.

Audiences will be transported to the world of Pandora for 3 full hours and 10 minutes! For almost an extra half an hour longer than the original Avatar, viewers will get to hop onboard a truly epic escapist cinematic journey.

Director, James Cameron, has revealed that the purpose of this is to tell an incredibly compelling story in a highly emotive way. He has made it clear that it is important in order to achieve the level of character development and storytelling desired.

Each movie will act as a stand alone film.

Although, there will be great depth, storytelling and character development carried through each of the films in the franchise, audiences will not have need to have seen any previous movies to understand and enjoy each film individually, unlike film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). James Cameron has compared the franchise to the Lord of the Rings franchise in terms of depth, character & story development and complexity.

Avatar: The Way of Water releases in cinemas on December 16.