{"id":597560,"date":"2025-11-27T17:27:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T17:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/597560\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T17:27:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T17:27:13","slug":"james-cameron-says-if-avatar-fire-and-ash-doesnt-make-enough-money-to-justify-avatar-4-and-5-hes-ready-to-walk-away-and-write-a-book-to-resolve-the-one-thread-it-leaves-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/597560\/","title":{"rendered":"James Cameron Says if Avatar: Fire and Ash Doesn’t Make Enough Money to Justify Avatar 4 and 5, He’s Ready to Walk Away and Write a Book to Resolve the One Thread It Leaves Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

What happens if Avatar: Fire and Ash<\/a> doesn\u2019t make enough profit to convince Disney to bankroll Avatar 4 and 5? Creator James Cameron has said he\u2019s ready to walk away from the franchise, adding he\u2019ll write a book to resolve the one thread Avatar 3 leaves open.<\/p>\n

The special effects-heavy Avatar films cost a huge amount of money to produce, but they have historically made billions of dollars at the box office. Avatar: Fire and Ash, due out in December, is expected to follow suit \u2014 and the pressure is on it to deliver for Disney so director James Cameron can realize his vision and release Avatar 4 and 5 over the next six years.<\/p>\n

Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast<\/a>, Cameron admitted he was feeling nervous about Avatar: Fire and Ash\u2019s box office performance, and was mindful of the \u201cforces\u201d working against theatrical releases in 2025.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the potential for \u201csequelitis,\u201d Cameron noted. “People tend to dismiss sequels unless it\u2019s the third Lord of the Rings film and you want to see what happens to everybody, which in my mind this is \u2014 this is the culmination of a story arc, but that may not be how the public sees it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s the \u201cone-two punch\u201d of streaming and Covid, which means fewer people are going to the movies \u2014 75% of what it was in 2019, Cameron suggested.<\/p>\n

When pressed on how much Avatar: Fire and Ash cost to make, Cameron wouldn\u2019t be drawn into divulging a figure, but did dance around the issue by suggesting it was a lot of money, and so the movie will have to make a lot of money.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is one metric f**k ton of money, which means we have to make two metric f**k tons of money to make a profit,\u201d he said. \u201cI have no doubt in my mind that this movie will make money. The question is, does it make enough money to justify doing it again?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"null\"<\/a>James Cameron at the world premiere of Avatar: The Way of Water on December 06, 2022 in London, England. Photo by Gareth Cattermole\/Getty Images for Disney.<\/p>\n

And on that point, Cameron admitted he was \u201cabsolutely\u201d ready to walk away from Avatar if Fire and Ash flops.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been in Avatar land for 20 years,\u201d he said. \u201cActually 30 years because I wrote it in \u201895, but I wasn\u2019t working continuously on it for those first 10 years. Yeah, absolutely, sure. If this is where it ends, cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what about open story threads?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s one open thread. I\u2019ll write a book!\u201d Cameron responded.<\/p>\n

What Cameron won\u2019t do is hand Avatar over to someone else (\u201cabsolutely not!\u201d). \u201cI have choices there,\u201d he explained. \u201cThere are levels in which I immerse. I could produce it. I don\u2019t think there\u2019d ever be a version where there\u2019s another Avatar movie that I didn\u2019t produce closely. But in terms of taking over my life, that\u2019s a threshold issue for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every James Cameron Movie Ranked\"We've<\/p>\n

Avatar 4 is down for release on December 21, 2029, with Avatar 5 due out December 19, 2031. Cameron, now 71, would be close to 80 years old by the time it all wraps up.<\/p>\n

Avatar remains the highest-grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation), and has earned a staggering $2.9 billion across several theatrical runs. (Avengers: Endgame overtook Avatar for a brief period, before Avatar then stole its crown back via a fresh re-release.) 2022 sequel Avatar: The Way of Water<\/a> earned $2.3 billion, meanwhile, cementing it as the third-highest grossing film of all time \u2014 just ahead of Cameron’s own Titanic, which floats on $2.2 billion.<\/p>\n

Can Avatar: Fire and Ash come close to its predecessors? The only movie to crack the $2 billion mark at the box office since Avatar 2 came out was Ne Zha 2. It feels like the world is in a very different place even now, just a few years after The Way of Water.<\/p>\n

If you’re hunting for the best offers this week, we’re actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub<\/a>, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation<\/a>, Nintendo<\/a>, and Xbox<\/a> deals.<\/p>\n

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What happens if Avatar: Fire and Ash doesn\u2019t make enough profit to convince Disney to bankroll Avatar 4…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-597560","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115622841269912655","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}