Director James Cameron says the third Avatar film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, will deal with grief in an honest way
Released in 2009, director James Cameron’s film Avatar became the first movie to officially gross more than $2 billion. Then it took him thirteen years to get a sequel into theatres, so it wasn’t clear if the follow-up was going to be able to replicate that success. But then, sure enough, Avatar: The Way of Water also grossed more than $2 billion, paving the way for not only Avatar 3, or Avatar: Fire and Ash, (which is scheduled to reach theatres on December 19, 2025) but also Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 – which will be released on December 21, 2029 and December 19, 2031, respectively. The Sullys, the Na’vi family at the heart of these films, lost one of its members in Avatar: The Way of Water, and Cameron has let it be known that they will still be dealing with that grief in Avatar: Fire and Ash – and he has said that the film will show their grief in an honest way.
Speaking with Empire, Cameron said (with thanks to Screen Rant for sharing the quote), “The exact quote, which is in the voiceover, is, ‘The fire of hate gives way to the ash of grief.’ I think what commercial Hollywood doesn’t do well is deal with grief the way human beings really deal with it. You know, characters get killed off, and then in the next movie everybody’s happy again. I’ve lost a lot of people, friends and family members, over the last six or eight years, and it doesn’t work that way. It also doesn’t make you so mad that you’re going to become an army of one and gun up and kill all those motherfu**ers, which is another Hollywood trope. It makes you just kind of depressed and fu**ed up. I’m not saying our movie’s depressed and fu**ed up, I’m just saying that I think we deal with that part of life quite honestly. The [Sullys] journey continues in a very naturalistic, novelistic way. I’ve sort of thought of this next cycle, meaning 3, 4 and 5, as how they continue to process the things that happen to them. Now, of course, they’re not human, but this is a movie for us, by us, right? Science-fiction is always just a big mirror of the human condition.“
The cast of Avatar: Fire and Ash includes Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement, Britain Dalton, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Jack Champion, Bailey Bass, Filip Geljo, Dileep Rao, Matt Gerald, David Thewlis, and Oona Chaplin, who takes on the role of Varang, leader of the antagonistic Ash Clan.
Cameron has said that he also has ideas for a potential Avatar 6 and 7, but they’ll only be made if there’s still a demand for the franchise. “They’ll be just far enough apart that they remain events, hopefully, in the lives of fans, of people who want to follow us, but not so far apart that it’s like there’s a generational difference between one movie. We’re fortunate we survived that, right? We got over that hurdle. So now we believe it’s going to come at the right pacing.“
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