Asked by BBC Radio during the promotional tour of Avatar: The Way of Water if he had spoken to Damon recently, Cameron chuckled and then added, “He’s beating himself up over this. And I really think, ‘Matt, you’re kind of like one of the biggest movie stars in the world, get over it’.
“But he had to do another Bourne film which was on his runway and there was nothing we could do about that. So he had to regretfully decline.”
Avatar: The Way of Water. Photo / 20th Century Studios via AP
Cameron also said he would be happy to have Damon make a cameo in a future Avatar sequel – “Must do it, we have to do it so the world is in equilibrium again, but he doesn’t get 10 per cent. F*** that.”
Damon revealed in 2021 onstage at the Cannes Film Festival, “I was offered a little movie called Avatar. James Cameron offered me 10 per of it. I will go down in history, you will never meet an actor who turned down more money”.
Avatar: The Way of Water is the first of four mooted Avatar sequels Cameron has planned for the franchise. It comes 13 years after the release of the original film, which remains the highest-grossing movie of all time, unadjusted for inflation, with a global box office of US$2.91 billion.
The sequel took in US$434 million ($688m) worldwide on its opening weekend, which was just shy of projections between US$450 million ($714m) to US$550 million ($873m).
Matt Damon turned down Avatar because he was committed to The Bourne Ultimatum. Photo / AP
Cameron has said the film would need to be the fourth or fifth highest grossing movie of all time – roughly US$2 billion ($3.1b) – before it breaks even.
The production budget was reported to be more than US$350 million ($555m) while marketing costs could run hundreds of millions more.
Avatar: The Way of Water picks up the story years later on the planet of Pandora where Sully and Neytiri are now parents to a brood of kids.
An old threat emerges and drives them to flee their forest home and seek refuge with Pandora’s water clans. But a now avatar-ed Quaritch chases them down, threatening to destroy the family Sully and Neytiri have built for themselves and the homes of their new friends.
Cameron and the filmmaking team including Weta Digital have spent years developing the technology behind rendering CGI water.
Cameron has already filmed Avatar 3 and a segment of Avatar 4.
The film stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Cliff Curtis, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, Brendan Cowell and Stephen Lang.
