Sam Worthington, who plays Sam in the new movie Avatar: The Way of Water, said that he made a serious mistake during filming the picture.
Worthington, who plays the franchise's protagonist Jake Sully in an interview with Variety, acknowledged that a significant portion of The Way of Water's underwater filming took place.
But when director James Cameron called "cut," the actor would typically decide to stay underwater and breathe through an oxygen tank rather than surface for air.
"There’s a lot of stuff going on in that water that you don’t really discuss," he admitted. "You’re 30 foot down and you need to go, you go. You hope that the water doesn’t turn pink."
The Way of Water is already on course for an opening weekend of over half a billion dollars, so Worthington's protracted underwater stints appear to be paying off.
According to forecasts, the movie might bring in $350 million abroad in addition to $175 million in the United States and Canada.
These figures are encouraging for future instalments of the Avatar series, since director James Cameron recently acknowledged that a fourth and fifth picture will only be made if "we earn some money with two and three."
These optimistic box office predictions line up with The Way of Water's positive initial reviews. The Avatar sequel has an 82 percent approval rating from 195 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, making it fresh on the site even before its official release.
Given that he previously expressed his confidence that moviegoers will adore the movie, Cameron is probably not shocked that The Way of Water has had such a great response thus far.
His tastes, he said, are "blue collar and universal," not "esoteric," and he added, "If I like my movie, I know other people are going to like my movie."