Everyone’s favourite multibillion-dollar bioluminescent space jungle … the original Avatar, from 2009. Photograph: WETA/AP View image in fullscreen Everyone’s favourite multibillion-dollar bioluminescent space jungle … the original Avatar, from 2009. Photograph: WETA/AP Week in geek James Cameron Out of the blue: James Cameron’s surprise departure would be good for Avatar Ben Child The director has yet again hinted that he may step away – but if he does actually relinquish control, it would likely benefit the franchise
A fter directing the highest-grossing film trilogy of all time, and having spent more than two decades bending technology, studio executives and several hundred million dollars’ worth of underwater motion capture to his will, James Cameron this week signalled that he may be ready to hand the future of the Avatar franchise to another director. Indeed, he bent Hollywood to his will so completely that it became almost impossible in the early 2010s to watch a blockbuster without uncomfortable plastic glasses, and without objects on the screen being hurled pointlessly towards the audience. Still, the Canadian film-maker now appears to be seriously considering handing over everyone’s favourite multibillion-dollar bioluminescent space jungle to someone else.
“There’s been momentum in the Avatar universe for 21 years at this point because we started in 2005,” Cameron told Denise Donlon in an interview for Canada’s governor general’s performing arts awards. “It’s been kind of an unbroken continuum. So this is the point where I’m looking at the landscape and asking, ‘What are the other stories I want to tell? How many of them do I need to direct myself versus writing and/or producing with other film-makers?’”
He added: “I haven’t made any decisions yet. I’m still in this liminal state of mapping out, you know, kind of the last act. And I don’t know if that last act will last a year or 20 years.”
This is not the first time Cameron has threatened to abandon his plans for Avatar. When he floated the possibility in 2022, I noted in this column that, at the rate the sequels were then progressing, he would be 106 by the time Avatar 5 reached cinemas and might require his own consciousness to be uploaded into a Na’vi. Yet only two years later, he insisted that anyone hoping to prise the next two films from his hands would have to run him over with a bus. It is therefore something of a surprise to find him once again contemplating life beyond Pandora.
View image in fullscreen Disappeared into the cultural undergrowth … 2025’s Avatar: Fire and Ash. Photograph: 20th Century Studios/PA Part of the problem is that Cameron’s record of handing cherished projects to other directors (while remaining aboard as producer) is decidedly mixed. Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days (1995), which Cameron conceived, co-wrote and produced, became a cult classic rather than a hit. Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris (2002), produced by Cameron, turned cosmic mystery into two hours of George Clooney staring mournfully at a space station. Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel (2019), developed for years as a potential project for Cameron to direct, made respectable money but failed to turn enormous eyes and cyborg rollerball into the beginning of a global religion.
Then came Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), on which Cameron served as producer and story godfather while Tim Miller directed, only for the franchise to discover that resurrecting Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwar…