Avatar: The Way Of Water: James Cameron reveals how he filmed underwater performances of Kate Winslet and Sigourney Weaver in a 250,000 gallon tank

20th Century Studios India will release Avatar: The Way of Water in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam on December 16, 2022.

Thirteen years ago, Academy Award-winning director James Cameron introduced moviegoers to a world unlike they’d ever seen with his breathtaking epic Avatar. Now, the visionary filmmaker is inviting audiences on a brand-new cinematic journey with the highly anticipated Avatar: The Way of Water.

Avatar: The Way Of Water: James Cameron reveals how he filmed underwater performances of Kate Winslet and Sigourney Weaver in a 250,000 gallon tank

For Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron and his team had to go back to the proverbial drawing board to determine how to capture performances underwater, something that had never been done before. “The key to it was to actually shoot underwater and at the surface of the water so people were swimming properly, getting out of the water properly, diving in properly,” Cameron says. “It looks real because the motion was real. And the emotion was real.”

There was an enormous tank constructed at the Manhattan Beach Studios. The tank could hold enough water to allow the filmmaker to replicate real-world oceanic conditions. Standing 120 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 30 feet deep and holding more than 250,000 gallons of water, the massive tank functioned as the film’s underwater “Volume,” as performance-capture stages are known.