Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at director James Cameron’s overindulgence Thursday night, comparing the budget overruns of “Avatar: The Way of Water” to Elon Musk’s purchase price of Twitter.
In his “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” monologue, Kimmel suggested an extreme course of action for the movie’s producers if it doesn’t turn a profit.
“Tomorrow — tonight, rather, is a big night at the movies,” Kimmel said. “The long-awaited sequel, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ is out. It is by far the most expensive movie ever made.
“They say ‘Avatar’ has to make 2 billion dollars just to break even,” Kimmel added.
Cameron indeed has said the film was so expensive to make it will have to become one of the highest-grossing movies in history to earn a penny. He even admitted as much to Disney and 20th Century studio executives, as he said in an interview with GQ, recalling that he told them, “You have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.”
Kimmel didn’t pull punches despite being on the payroll of Disney company ABC.
“Even Elon Musk was like, ‘You guys overpaid for this,’” Kimmel said, referring to Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
“But there is a plan,” Kimmel said, reassuring his worried viewers. “They say if the movie doesn’t start making money by March, producers are going to send a Terminator back in time to kill James Cameron’s mother.”
You can watch Kimmel’s full monologue at the top of this file, in which he also joined fellow late-night host Stephen Colbert to lambast Donald Trump and his launching of a line of digital trading cards.
