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After producing GONE WITH THE WIND, David O. Selznick spent the rest of his life trying, but failing, to top that. James Cameron, however, followed TITANIC with AVATAR, which in 2009 took over as the all-time top grossing movie.

AVATAR became the first movie to hit $2B worldwide and then went on to $2.5B. That made it the biggest grossing film ever until 2019 when AVENGERS: ENDGAME did $2.799B. Then AVATAR got a China release that boosted its gross by $262.1M. With $2.924B under its belt today, AVATAR remains the boxoffice king.

The sci-fi epic, written, directed, co-produced & co-edited by Cameron,  opened Dec. 19, 2009 via 20th Century Fox with a cast including Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver & Sam Worthington.

Cameron began developing AVATAR in 1994 by writing an 80-page treatment inspired by his favorite sci-fi novels from childhood. He wanted it to open in ’99, but with the sky high cost of special effects at the time he needed a $400M budget. After all the studios turned him down, AVATAR went into the Hollywood deep freeze for eight years.

In August 1996, Cameron said he could do AVATAR with computer generated actors for many roles, bringing the budget down to about $100M. Nothing happened and as years passed he worked on his Na’vi characters’ language, re-wrote the screenplay and created the fictional universe in which his story was set. By 2005, visual effects technology had improved tremendously and AVATAR’s budget with live actors was now significantly lower at $237M. That was still an expensive number, but it was at least now a possibility for studios to consider.

While AVATAR was struggling in development in the ’90s, Fox was losing its appetite for the project as costs escalated and delays slowed down Cameron’s TITANIC, which Fox was distributing with Paramount. Cameron had a traffic light with its amber light always on positioned outside co-producer Jon Landau’s office to signal AVATAR’s questionable future.

By mid-2006, Fox had dropped out of AVATAR and Cameron was looking for new financing and distribution. Disney agreed to save the day — but suddenly Fox was exercising its right of first refusal. Fox was officially back on board in October ’06 after Cameron brought in other money that cut Fox’s risk to about half of AVATAR’s $237M budget.

Afterwards, a top Fox executive reportedly told Cameron, “I don’t know if we’re crazier for letting you do this, or if you’re crazier for thinking you can do this.”

As it turned out, nobody was crazy. AVATAR’s success spawned the sequel AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER, which opened Dec. 16, 2022 and did $2.32B worldwide on a budget of $320M. By then, Disney owned Fox and  the AVATAR franchise, making up for having not gotten the first AVATAR.