Writer-director James Cameron isn’t worried about the possibility that Avatar: The Way of Water will be a flop at the box office. Responding to “the trolls and the naysayers,” Cameron told Variety that The Way of Water is good enough for him, so he expects audiences to enjoy it, too.

“That it’ll fall on its ass?” Cameron said. “I don’t worry about it. I don’t think anything one does artistically in life should be determined by the trolls and the naysayers. You just go where you think it makes sense.”

In a sense, Cameron said, he made The Way of Water for himself–and that’s good enough for Cameron, no matter how the film performs commercially. “My tastes are so kind of blue collar and general. They’re not esoteric, my personal tastes. If I like my movie, I know other people are gonna like my movie. It’s very simplistic, really, ultimately,” he said.

2009’s Avatar is the highest-grossing movie in history, so The Way of Water has very big shoes to fill. Whether or not the sequel can match or exceed the original’s box office figures remains to be seen, but early box office tracking estimates paint a positive picture. The Way of Water is expected to make $170 million or more in the US alone for its first weekend, which would be up significantly from the $77 million that the original Avatar made in the US for its opening weekend in 2009.

Cameron has said The Way of Water needs to make around $1 billion to turn a profit. He has also said The Way of Water is a very bad business decision.

The Way of Water had its premiere in London this week, and the first reactions to the movie were overwhelmingly positive. People who saw the movie called it “vastly superior” to the first movie and “breathtaking” in terms of its visuals.