The industry may well have moved away from this beautiful technology, but for anyone with the right setup you might be wondering whether or not Avatar The Way of Water will come out on Blu-ray 3D. With the 2009 film still one of the best available on the format, it sort of follows that the 2nd would be a great fit too.
The good news is that the release date for physical formats in North America have been confirmed and they include Blu-ray 3D. You can read more details below, but it’s great to get confirmation that Avatar 2 will be available to watch in 3D at home.
AdvertisementBlu-ray 3D really hasn’t had much in the way of new material in a while, so it’s easy to see why there was a little doubt about the prospect. The reality is that home entertainment details for Avatar 2 took a long time to get confirmed, apart from the digital release, so there wasn’t anything concrete to go on for a while, but with positive comments from producer John Landau and director James Cameron we’ve been hopeful from the start.
We’re going to dig into all of the details to give you more of a rounded view on The Way of Water. It’s going to make for an epic film to watch on a 3D TV at home, and the details below will give you everything you need to know.
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What’s the latest with Blu-ray 3D?
Blu-ray 3D had its heyday just after the 2009 release of Avatar with the James Cameron film setting the match to the touch paper for the home entertainment format. The technology grew in popularity initially, but the makers of TVs and Blu-ray players have definitely moved away from developing new devices in the last ten years or so.
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The good news, though, is that you don’t necessarily have to go back all that long into the past for big films that got a Blu-ray 3D release. Thor Ragnarok, for example, got a port for the format back in 2018, and it was a similar story for Avengers Infinity War in 2018 and Avengers Endgame a year later.
The reason that these examples were so important in terms of Avatar The Way of Water is that it’s made by 20th Century Studios, which is a part of the Walt Disney Company. It’s a similar setup to Marvel Studios and MCU films like The Avengers, so if it was good enough for Ragnarok then it should be good enough for Avatar 2.
The negative came when you look at MCU films from the more recent Phase 5 with the likes of Black Widow and Eternals not being available on Blu-ray 3D. The cautionary tale continued when you look at home entertainment releases in 2022 when even the biggest films like Spider-Man No Way Home didn’t get a port.
Avatar The Way of Water Blu-ray 3D release
As mentioned above, the Avatar 2 Blu-ray 3D release has been confirmed in North America with a date scheduled for June 20th, 2023, which is a few weeks after it streams on Disney Plus. No date has been confirmed for the UK as of yet, but we’re expecting it to be available on 3D for both regions when it comes out.
AdvertisementBefore the confirmation came in, the prospect of a Blu-ray 3D version of Avatar The Way of Water release was still a 50-50 situation. On the one hand it’s the sequel to the biggest 3D movie of all time, in fact the biggest movie of all time, so there was more than enough scope for it to get the green light.
It really isn’t that long ago since we had regular releases in 3D formats and it’s only in the last few years that the well has started to dry up. That didn’t mean it’s going to be a no for Avatar 2, but it imply that there might a slight cloud over the possibility.
The big counterargument to all of this is the sheer success of the film at the box office. We all know that it’s one of the most expensive films ever made, so the pressure was on for it to live up to the results of the first film. It looks like it’s well on the way to doing just that and a big part of surpassing the breakeven mark for the film will be the home release.
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There has been no early access rental, but the digital purchase options will take up the lion’s share of this, and DVD, Blu-ray and 4K physical formats will also be important. At the height of the success of 3D Blu-ray players and TVs there were several million of them in operation. If you take that and low-ball it down to a million still in action and throw in a $30/£20 approx. price tag then you’re looking at a decent return that might be enough to help it over the line.
AdvertisementHowever, the real reason we were pretty hopeful for the prospect of an Avatar The Way of Water 3D Blu-ray release was simply the fact that it’s James Cameron’s baby. He pioneered the technology in the first film and it’s back again in full swing in the sequel, so it just makes sense that he’ll want to put it out on 3D too.
If that wasn’t enough, we had the words of producer John Landau to back up the potential. “With 3D, High Dynamic Range, high frame-rate, we’re able to present a higher quality image today than we could on ‘Avatar’ by far,’ he says. “It goes beyond what was possible before, and we do all of this to service the narrative storytelling. It’s a window into another world.”
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Director, James Cameron went on to add that, “You go into a movie theater, and you’re being transported to a fictional fantasy world. The more you can suspend your disbelief, the more fun it is. There’s almost a contract between the movie and the audience – we’re all just gonna join hands and skip off to Pandora together. It’s gonna be fun.” The good news is that the sentiment translate over to home media too.
We probably won’t see a big return for the format until the game-changing day one of the big streaming services start to put out content in 3D. If Netflix or Disney+ ever release their biggest films to stream in 3D then it may just see a new boom for TVs. For now, we’ll settle for the Avatar The Way of Water Blu-ray.
In terms of timing for the UK, the only things we knew for sure was that the digital purchase release took place on March 28th, 2023 in North America and April 3rd in the UK, and Disney Plus gets Avatar 2 on June 7th. Physical formats will follow in the US on June 20th, so we might get it over here in the UK either at the end of June or early July.
The Avatar Twitter account has recently posted that the digital purchase release is available to buy in the US at a low price for a limited time. This is another good indicator that the rest of the home media release isn’t too far away now.
To keep tabs on the latest upcoming films you can also check out our movie news section and for more on the film visit the official website at www.avatar.com/.
