‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Delivers Fifth VFX Oscar to Weta’s Joe Letteri

Baku, March 13, AZERTAC

Surprising no one, Avatar: The Way of Water collected the Oscar in visual effects for its jaw-dropping work that helped to propel the movie to more than $2.2 billion at the box office, making it the third highest grossing movie of all time, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

In doing so, Weta FX’s production senior VFX supervisor Joe Letteri collected his fifth competitive award in the category at the 2023 Oscars. He now joins Ken Ralston (Forrest Gump) in holding five competitive Oscars apiece in the category. Both trail Denis Murren (Jurassic Park), who holds the category record of eight competitive Academy Awards.

With the win for The Way of Water, visual effects supervisor Richard Baneham accepted his second VFX Oscar, having previously won the trophy for the original Avatar. Weta VFX supervisor Eric Saindon and senior animation supervisor Daniel Barrett each won their first Oscar on Sunday.

Accepting onstage, Baneham thanked director James Cameron “whose artistic thumbprint is on every part of this;” producer Jon Landau, “who is the engine who drove us forward;” as well as the large VFX team that worked on the movie.