Are you tired of Avatar? James Cameron isn’t yet

Director James Cameron has revealed that he is “looking at some new technologies” to try and get Avatar 4 and 5 made “in half the time for two-thirds of the cost.” He also added — and that isn’t a surprise, considering he has spent the last 17 years largely making the Avatar films — that it would take him “at least a year” to sort out the cost and technology metrics. 

Avatar (2009)

In an interview with The Empire Film podcast, the filmmaker spoke about how he plans to continue his long-in-the-works sci-fi saga. When asked what is next for Cameron following his Billie Eilish concert movie — the only project he has directed since the three Avatar films since 2006 — he said he hopes to alter his process to hopefully “more efficiently,” diving back into Pandora, the habitable exomoon depicted in the Avatar franchise. 

“You know, I will be doing some writing. I have got a number of projects that I am cooking,” he said. “And Avatar 4 and 5 are still floating out there. We are going to be looking at some new technologies to try to do them more efficiently. Because they are hideously expensive and take a long time, I want to do them in half the time for two-thirds of the cost. That is my metric.”

James Cameron

Cameron added that it is going to “take us a year or so” to even come up with a plan on how to more efficiently create Avatar movies going forward. In the meantime, he promised that he will be “writing and doing a couple of other things.”

Avatar first took audiences to Pandora with the launch of the original film in 2009, but its sequel, The Way of Water, didn’t arrive till 13 years later in 2022. The three-year wait between Avatar 2 and its Fire and Ash follow-up was comparatively less.

While all three Avatar movies have managed to cross the $1 billion mark at the box office, Fire and Ash wasn’t as big, contributing to growing talk that there is large-scale fatigue with respect to these films, made by the man who has directed other notable outings like Terminator and Titanic. 

Producer Disney has currently scheduled tentative release dates of December 21, 2029 for Avatar 4 and December 19, 2031 for Avatar 5. A recent update from producer Rae Sanchini promised that scripts are in hand as the team continues to move “full speed ahead.”