Up to and following the release of James Cameron’s sequel to 2009’s Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water, conversation was feverish with speculation focusing on the budget, the effects, and whether or not the franchise still had legs especially after so long an absence. What hasn’t been talked about is what that huge lead time meant to the actors who starred in in the movie, actors like Edie Falco who plays the film’s new villain, General Frances Ardmore.
Deadline reported on the star’s recent appearance on ABC’s The View, in which she revealed that such a long lead time—four years since shooting to the movie’s eventual release—meant she thought the Avatar sequel had already come out and flopped at the box office.
Edie Falco—best and probably forever known as Carmela Soprano from the hit HBO series, The Sopranos—needn’t worry about the new Avatar film, Avatar: The Way Of Water stalling out on the money-making track anytime soon as it’s more than on its way to maybe not exceed the first film’s mega-success (there has been a pandemic amongst other issues in the intervening years, after all), but not do badly by any metric. What fans might find funnier, and what’s often not talked about in making effects-heavy spectacles is that the normal lead time for the production of a film, generally in the one to two year range can be doubled or even longer in the case of movies as big as an Avatar entry. It’s easy for an actor to forget something they made years before—and assume it landed like a lead balloon if they never hear about it again.
Talking to the women of The View, Falco mentioned how she had seen the first Avatar way back when it came out—thirteen years ago now—and then, after getting the call to take on the role of the franchise’s new villain (something she’s set to reprise in the third Avatar film as well) she mostly forgot about it. “…the second Avatar, the one that’s coming out, I shot I think four years ago. And then I’ve been busy doing stuff and somebody mentioned Avatar and I thought, ‘Oh, I guess it came out and didn’t do very well.’ Because I hadn’t heard anything. I thought, ‘Oh, well it happens!’ Then one of Falco’s friends reminded her the film was coming out and she was shocked: “And then someone recently said, ‘Oh, Avatar is coming out!’ I said, ‘It hasn’t come out yet?!'”
Falco—who took on the role of the human replacement for Stephen Lang’s hardcore Colonel Quaritch from the first film (who is now a hybrid)—can be forgiven for having forgotten her time spent on Pandora considering most of it was surrounded by green screen and people in body stockings. Even more so, it happens because of the fact that like most working actors, there’s always the next job on the horizon and she fully dedicates herself to that. Once she’s wrapped on something like Avatar: The Way of Water, she’s not thinking about the film any longer, she’s focused on the next project. It’s mostly fans who obsess over the final product, not the people involved in making the sausage. Now that the film has been released to such critical, audience, and box office acclaim, however, it’s probably safe to say Edie Falco will never forget having made Avatar: The Way of Water ever again.
Avatar: The Way of Water is in theaters now.
Source: Deadline