The Return of the Box Office King

It’s been 13 years since James Cameron released Avatar, the highest-grossing movie of all time Now, the director is back with a deeply personal sequel—and the reasonable expectation that it could be the biggest thing he’s done yet.

- By Zach Baron. Photographs by Levon Baird

After James Cameron’s Avatar came out in 2009 and made 2.7 billion, the director found the deepest point that exists in all of earth’s oceans and, in time, he dove to it. When Cameron reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, a couple of hundred miles off the southwest coast of Guam, in March 2012, he became the first person in history to descend the 6.8-mile distance solo, and one of only a few people to ever go that deep. Since then, others have followed—most prominently, a private-equity titan and former Naval Reserve intelligence officer turned explorer named Victor Vescovo— but Cameron is adamant that none have surpassed him. Vescovo, Cameron told me, claimed he went deeper, but you can’t. So he’s basically just making shit up.”

As people sometimes do in response to Cameron’s stories, Vescovo disagrees—“I have a different scientific perspective,” he told me, diplomatically—but even he is a fan of Cameron’s films. Like Cameron, Vescovo has made multiple dives to the wreck of the Titanic, and while returning from one of them, he emailed Cameron. I said, I watched Titanic at the Titanic.’ And he actually replied: Yeah, but I made Titanic at the Titanic.’”