Avatar 2 hits Disney Plus and HBO Max in June

Return to the world of Pandora from the comfort of your own couch when Avatar: The Way of Water hits Disney Plus on June 7. But wait! If you have a Max account (the streaming service currently known as HBO Max, which will become Max on May 23) instead, you can also watch it there on the same day. Thanks previous distribution deals!

Avatar: The Way of Water premiered last December, a full 13 years after James Cameron’s original movie premiered in 2009. It followed the next generation of the Sully family, but most importantly, it introduced a pod of sentient space whales called the tulkun. The movie clocks in at just over three hours, but watching it via streaming means you can pause anytime you want if you need to run to the bathroom. And considering how much water is in this movie — well, let’s just say that’s a likely scenario.

If you can’t wait for streaming, Avatar: The Way of Water is also available to rent via Prime Video, YouTube, and other rental outlets.

Any movie showing up on two different streaming platforms at the same time is certainly a strange and surprising turn of events, but it makes sense that something special is going on for a movie as big as Avatar: The Way of Water. The reason it’s showing up on both Max and Disney Plus is because of the Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Entertainment — the studio that produces the Avatar franchise.

While 20th Century Studios is now under the Disney umbrella, that wasn’t the case the last time the company, then known as 20th Century Fox, negotiated a streaming rights contract. At the time, 20th Century agreed to allow its movies to stream exclusively on HBO Max, the Warner Bros. streaming platform, because 20th Century didn’t have one of its own. However, now that the studios is owned by Disney, it still has to honor its deal with Warner. While normally that deal is exclusive, it seems that Disney has bargained its way into Avatar 2 landing on both streaming services, which is how we got this strange deal.

Either way, congrats, Avatar fans! Or as the Na’vi say: Congrats, Avatar fans!

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