In a revealing new interview, legendary director James Cameron has outlined his straightforward contingency plan should Disney decide not to proceed with the final two installments of the Avatar saga. Should Avatar 4 and 5 fail to get a green light, Cameron says he will hold a press conference to personally tell the world how the epic story was meant to end .
The director’s comments come as the third film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, performs strongly at the global box office. Despite its success, Cameron is openly pragmatic about the future of his most ambitious project, acknowledging that the business case for continuing must be proven with each new film .
The Backup Plan: A Press Conference and Potential Books
During a conversation with Entertainment Weekly, Cameron detailed his unique approach to ensuring fans are not left with an incomplete story .
“Here’s what it is. If we don’t get to make 4 and 5, for whatever reason, I’ll hold a press conference and I’ll tell you what we were gonna do. How’s that?”
Beyond a one-time reveal, Cameron expressed a desire to expand the rich world of Pandora into novelized form. He noted that an immense amount of character backstory and cultural detail has already been developed, which would lend itself to a deeper exploration in books . However, he questioned the commercial viability of such a project in today’s market .
“There’s so much culture and backstory and lateral detail in these characters that’s been worked out,” Cameron said. “I’d love to do something that’s at that level of granular detail… It might be good to have the canonical record of what it was all supposed to be.”
Box Office Performance: The Deciding Factor
The future of the franchise hinges on the financial performance of Avatar: Fire and Ash. Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Cameron was candid about the pressures facing the film, citing challenges like “sequelitis,” the dominance of streaming, and lingering effects from the COVID-19 pandemic on theater attendance .
He emphasized the monumental cost of producing the visual effects-heavy films, quipping that each movie requires “one metric f**k ton of money” to make and therefore must earn double that to be profitable . While confident the film will make money, the key question is whether it will make enough to justify the subsequent billion-dollar productions .
- Current Performance: Avatar: Fire and Ash has demonstrated a powerful opening. The film earned over $500 million globally in its first week, playing a key role in helping The Walt Disney Company cross the $6 billion mark at the worldwide box office for the first time since 2019 .
- The Precedent: The bar is exceptionally high. The first Avatar (2009) remains the highest-grossing film of all time with $2.923 billion, while Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) earned $2.343 billion, making it the third-highest-grossing film in history . Industry analysts suggest Fire and Ash would likely need to approach the $2 billion threshold to guarantee the sequels .
The Stakes for the Story: Closure vs. Unfinished Potential
Avatar: Fire and Ash was designed to provide a degree of narrative satisfaction while also setting the stage for a larger conclusion .
If the series ended with the third film, audiences would see several major arcs reach a point of closure:
- Jake Sully returns as the legendary Toruk Makto.
- Neytiri works through her grief and begins to let go of her hatred for humans.
- Spider is fully accepted into Na’vi culture.
- Colonel Quaritch completes a dark mirror of Jake’s original journey, integrating with the Ash People .
However, significant story threads would be left unresolved . The most prominent is the ultimate destiny of Kiri, whose profound connection to the planetary entity Eywa suggests a role as a savior figure. Furthermore, the overarching conflict with the human RDA corporation is far from over, with teases pointing to the involvement of its unseen President. The fates of key characters like the Ash People leader Varang and Quaritch are also left ambiguous by the end of Fire and Ash .
Cameron has confirmed that there is “one open thread” that the third film leaves unresolved, which is the specific narrative element he would address in a potential book .
A Director’s Commitment and Studio History
Cameron, who first wrote Avatar in 1995, has spent decades building the world of Pandora . His commitment to seeing his vision through is absolute, but so is his condition for continuing: he will not hand creative control to another director.
“Absolutely not!” Cameron stated when asked about another filmmaker taking over. “I have choices there… I don’t think there’d ever be a version where there’s another Avatar movie that I didn’t produce closely. But in terms of taking over my life, that’s a threshold issue for me.”
The director has a history of advocating for his expanded vision. He revealed that the studio initially pushed back when he decided to split the planned sequels, expanding the saga from three films to four (and eventually five) . His legendary rebuttal to studio executives was, “What part of you getting another chance to make $2 billion is in question here?” .
His confidence in the later stories is high. He shared that the script for Avatar 4 was so well-received that it prompted a studio executive to respond with an email that read, “Holy f**k,” and contained no traditional revision notes . Cameron has already shot some footage for the fourth film .
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What Happens Next?
For now, the scheduled release dates remain on the calendar:
- Avatar 4: December 21, 2029
- Avatar 5: December 19, 2031
James Cameron, now 71, would be nearly 80 by the time the saga fully concludes on screen . Whether the story of Pandora finishes in a movie theater or at a press conference, the director’s promise ensures that, one way or another, fans will learn how the epic was always meant to end .
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