Your own fault! “Knives Out 2” superstar celebrates success with “Glass Onion” – but misses the opportunity of a lifetime with “Avatar 2”.

While Edward Norton has never really left, it feels like the star of ‘Fight Club’ and ‘American History X’ has been back for a few years now. For example, he is currently conquering the Netflix charts with Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” – as an eccentric billionaire who invites you to a murder mystery party on his private island. The crazy thing is that at the same time he would have had the chance to storm the cinema lists.

In Germany as well as in the rest of the world, there is currently no escaping “Avatar 2: The Way Of Water”, which recently reached its first major box office milestone and will probably soon replace “Top Gun: Maverick” as the most successful movie of the year. Yet Edward Norton turned down a role in Avatar 2, missing out on one of the highest-grossing films of all time. That should definitely be “The Way Of Water,” even though it remains to be seen how far his all-time favorite qualities will take it in the all-time box office rankings.

That’s why Edward Norton rejected Avatar 2

James Cameron is a director who has established himself over the last 40 years as one of the great, great masters of cinema. “Terminator 1+2”, “Aliens”, “The Abyss”, “True Lies”, “Titanic” and of course “Avatar”: whatever the Canadian did, his films always stand for great cinema, as they were before been. I haven’t seen it – and how it’s helped advance cinema as a medium a bit, so that in Norton’s case there’s really only one question: How can you reject someone like James Cameron?

Well, in this case it wasn’t due to a busy schedule that prevented Norton from getting on camera for Avatar 2. It was much more a conscious choice on the part of the actor, who was not averse to the mega blockbuster. However, his ideas about his role differed from the director’s: Edward Norton refused when told he wasn’t going to play a Na’vi but a human.

“I’m a Na’vi or nothing,” Nolan said in an interview a few years ago (through ). He is friends with Cameron and even admires and idolizes the Canadian blockbuster specialist. Yet he didn’t want to be part of the “industrial world” that was destroying Pandora.

A few days after its theatrical release, we also now know that Edward Norton actually didn’t make it to “Avatar 2: The Way Of Water”. However, the story has a happy ending:

James Cameron won Edward Norton for a new movie

In the end everything went as it should. And somehow the story ended well: not only did Edward Norton have a hit with “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story,” which is currently number 1 on the Netflix charts, James Cameron can also be happy prizes that his return to Pandora generates enormous interest (and equally enormous income) after 13 (!) years of waiting. And meanwhile there was also a collaboration between the two.

Because At least James Cameron managed to get Edward Norton to make a cameo appearance in “Alita: Battle Angel” to win. After working for decades to film the manga himself, Cameron handed over directing to Robert Rodriguez (“From Dusk Till Dawn”, “Sin City”). The Cameron DNA nevertheless permeates the final film. He stayed with the project as producer until the end.

At least for Norton, there was a small role that could have turned into a much bigger role in a possible “Alita: Battle Angel 2.” “The Way Of Water” press tour producer Jon Landau revealed that this is far from over. from part 1 and would love to dive into the world of Alita and Co. again – preferably with Edward Norton in a bigger role.