James Cameron screened an unfinished version of Avatar: Fire and Ash for his wife, and she was reduced to tears for four hours.
Although the release of Avatar: Fire and Ash is still many months away, one person who has already seen the film has had quite an emotional reaction. James Cameron screened an unfinished version of Avatar: Fire and Ash for his wife, Suzy Amis Cameron, and it left her crying for four hours.
“My wife watched the whole thing from end to end — she had kept herself away from it and I wasn’t showing her bits and pieces as we went along. This was December 22nd,” Cameron told Empire. “She bawled for four hours. She kept trying to get her shit back together so she could tell me specific reactions, and then she’d just tear up and start crying again. Finally, I’m like, ‘Honey, I’ve got to go to bed. Sorry, we’ll talk about it some other time.’“
Cameron trusts his wife’s reaction to the film: “She called the ball on Titanic and Avatar and Avatar 2. So I trust her heart on it.” Of course, Suzy could have been reduced to tears by the length of the film, as Cameron recently confirmed that it will be even longer than Avatar: The Way of Water. “In a nutshell, we had too many great ideas packed into act one of movie 2. The [film] was moving like a bullet train, and we weren’t drilling down enough on character. So I said, ‘Guys, we’ve got to split it.’” Cameron said, “Movie 3 will actually be a little bit longer than movie 2.” For the record, The Way of Water was 192 minutes long.
Avatar: Fire and Ash will introduce another biome of Pandora, where the “aggressive, volcanic race” of Na’vi, known as the Ash People, reside. The film is currently set for a December 19, 2025 release, followed by Avatar 4 on December 21, 2029, and Avatar 5 on December 18, 2031. Cameron even has ideas for a potential Avatar 6 and 7, but that all depends on whether the demand for the franchise is still there. “There’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,” Cameron said. “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.“
