James Cameron’s Avatar is the highest-grossing movie in history, but the 2009 film didn’t get a sequel right away. In fact, the sequel, The Way of Water, is only hitting theaters this year, some 13 years after the original. So does Cameron think the huge gap will be a problem? Speaking to The New York Times, Cameron said he initially had concerns that audiences might not care as much after so many years, but the first teaser trailer had nearly 150 million views in its first day. Despite that fast success with the trailer, Cameron said he’s not sure The Way of Water will find a big audience again.

“I was a little concerned that I had stretched the tether too far, in our fast-paced, modern world, with Avatar 2 coming in 12 years later. Right until we dropped the teaser trailer, and we got 148 million views in 24 hours,” he said. “There’s that scarce-seen-but-wondered-at-principle, which is, ‘Wow, we haven’t seen that in a long time, but I remember how cool it was back then.’ Does that play in our favor? I don’t know. I guess we’re going to find out.”