By the numbers

● Live-action filming for The Way of Water and scenes for Avatar 3 and parts of Avatar 4 took place in Wellington and Auckland in 3 blocks in each of 2019, 2020 and 2021 and included 185 Main Unit shoot days and 82 Second Unit shoot days.

● Avatar contracted 1400+ crew. More than 90% of the total crew number are New Zealand citizens, including 798 extras, 114 stunt artists, 46 cast and 36+ interns and apprentices.

● Production used 174 sets (3x more than Avatar 1), including 17 large scale sets with costs of at least $1 million each, 13 ‘‘wet sets’’, 87 grey sets used for the integration of liveaction photography and the CG world of Pandora. Construction was needed of 5 large watertanks, 1 boat, 2 submarines and 3 aircraft, and production contracted the building of a uniquely designed 1000hp jetboat.

● 300+ employed in art and construction and $4m spent on making hand props. Elaborate body painting of young Jack Champion took 2 hours every day and 10x dreadlocked wigs were specially made and maintained over 4 years. The biggest props spend was $1.2m on 6 artillery guns.

● In the SFX department, 3 large excavators were used to create waves in the water tanks where 1.5 million litres of heated water was used and transferred from tank to tank. They dumped 5000 litres of water in 6 seconds while shooting submarines getting flooded.