As we get ready for Avatar: Fire and Ash to be the next big blockbuster on the 2025 movie schedule, of course, we can’t help but wonder where the franchise goes from here. There are currently release dates set for Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 for 2029 and 2031. However, I asked the man behind Pandora himself, James Cameron, where he’s officially at with the projected sequels prior to Fire and Ash’s global release.
Production on Avatar: The Way of Water and Fire and Ash has been an extensive process that was in the making for over a decade following the success of the original Avatar movie in 2009. Filming officially took place from 2017 to 2020 before Way of Water’s colossal 2022 debut. Now that Fire and Ash is completely finished, and has been screened, Cameron said this about how ready he is to continue the saga:
I mean, artistically, I'm ready. I mean, we have to evaluate how well this film does, what the appetite for it is, and so on. If we get lucky, then we'll talk about staging and production and so on, and when we wanna do it.
As the Hollywood business tends to go, the fate of the Avatar movies will be in the hands of audiences this holiday season. Recent tracking projections (via Deadline) indicate it could have one of the biggest opening weekends of the year with a domestic debut in the $100 to $130 million range, but only time will tell whether moviegoers will still show up in droves for another adventure to Pandora.
The last two Avatar movies certainly inspire a vote of confidence, given they’ve made a collective $5.2 billion worldwide across just two movies, with it being one of the rare movies people spend extra on to see in 3D as well. Still, as Cameron waits and sees about Fire and Ash’s commercial success, he also told me this:
There's a couple of other projects that I wanna do that are much smaller that I might do interstitially there or I might just hammer right into it. I haven't quite decided yet. That's me speaking as an artist having a lot of goals. And, you know, I’m also 71, I can't plan the next 25 years. Maybe 20, I dunno. We'll see.
James Cameron has always been an ambitious filmmaker, and his excitement to work sounds as strong as ever, as his interests toggle between two more Avatar movies and other ideas floating in his head. The filmmaker recently worked with Billie Eilish on a 3D version of her live show, which is set to hit theaters this spring, and he also recently spoke about working on a new Terminator project he has a “stack of notes” on.
Every Avatar movie has been a technical challenge for James Cameron, with the filmmaker leading his cast and crew through shooting motion capture performances underwater. It remains to be seen which new challenges will come up for the fourth and fifth movies, should they go into production, but perhaps after what was achieved for Way of Water and Fire and Ash, there will be more momentum around Avatar 4 and 5?
The importance of the audience being on James Cameron’s side is certainly clear as we look forward to Avatar: Fire and Ash hitting theaters this December 19.
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