Falco stars as one of the movie’s humans, General Ardmore (Picture: Bruce Glikas/WireImage)

Edie Falco, one of the stars of James Cameron’s new epic movie, Avatar: The Way of Water, has admitted that she thought the movie had already been released – and flopped.

The Sopranos and Nurse Jackie star shot her part in the film several years ago, and clearly hadn’t anticipated quite how long it would take the hotly anticipated sequel to be finished in post-production and then hit cinemas.

So, she just assumed it already had and – because there was no buzz – that the movie hadn’t performed well.

Appearing on US talk show The View on Friday, she told hosts including Whoopi Goldberg: ‘I saw the first one when it was out, and that’s going back some time. And the second Avatar, the one that’s coming out, I shot I think four years ago.

‘And then I’ve been busy doing stuff and somebody mentioned Avatar and I thought, “Oh, I guess it came out and didn’t do very well”, because I didn’t heard anything. But it happens, you know!’

She continued: ‘And then someone recently said, “Oh, Avatar is coming out!” I said, “It hasn’t come out yet?!”’

As the panel cracked up over her revelation, the 59-year-old then joked that she ‘will never work again because I said that’.

Falco stars as General Frances Ardmore, commander of the Joint Expeditionary Task Force, who has taken over the Resources Development Administration work and has her sights set on Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in her bid to make Pandora humanity’s future home.

The Way of Water is the sequel to the highest-grossing film of all time, and writer-director James Cameron has already said that it will need to join its predecessor right up near the top, as ‘the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history’, just to break even.

Avatar: The Way of Water was filmed mostly over four years ago (Picture: 20th Century Studios)

James Cameron has been open about how well the sequel needs to do, just to break even (Picture: Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock)

Cameron has previously dodged the question surrounding actual budget figures, but early reports placed production fees in the $250million (£205m) range.

Over its first weekend at the US box office, Avatar 2 ended up taking a respectable $134million (£110m).

However, that is below the expectations of both analysts at $175m (£144m) and Disney’s own projections of between $135m (£111m) and $150m (£123m).

Some of Falco’s young co-stars in the film, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss and Jack Champion, who play Tuktirey, the youngest of the Sully clan, and Spider, Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri’s (Zoe Saldana) adopted human son, have also reflected on what it was like to dedicate four and a half years of their lives to the project ahead of its release.

As a human among the Na’vi, Jack had possibly one of the biggest workloads of all, essentially having to film all of his scenes twice over a span of almost five years.

He explained to Metro.co.uk at the world premiere: ‘I did two and a half years of performance capture with the cast and then I did another two and a half years of by myself in New Zealand. Instead of a performance capture suit, I was in a loincloth – in my underwear – and I basically had to learn how to fly solo without any of the other cast!

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‘So I had to rely on that emotional relationship I’d built years prior.’

‘From the first day, getting cast in June 2017 – getting that call – to now December, 2022 and we’re at the world premiere! The day has come, and I’ve been so fortunate,’ added Trinity.

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