The blue alien Neytiri looks inquisitive in "Avatar"
(20th Century Studios)

Maybe ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ won’t take over a decade to make

James Cameron is not a man who does things by halves. Actually, that’s putting it mildly. To create 2009’s Avatar, he pioneered the use of new 3D technology to create the world of Pandora, having held off making the movie for a decade because the tech to make it simply wasn’t available yet.

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When Avatar was released, Cameron promised that there would be sequels if the film did well, and it did extremely well, to the extent that it’s still the highest-grossing movie of all time. (It was briefly overtaken by Avengers: Endgame in 2019, but Cameron then proceeded to re-release Avatar in international cinemas, putting him back on top again.) So a sequel was planned, called Avatar: The Way of Water … and that movie took a long time to make it to the big screen because even more new technology needed to find its feet before the movie could be filmed. For the water-based sequel, the actors needed to do their motion-capture performances underwater, which had never been done before.

There was a 13-year gap between Avatar and its immediate sequel, but it paid off. 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water was a stunning success, becoming the third-highest-grossing film in history behind the original Avatar and Avengers: Endgame. After that, James Cameron hopped straight into working on a threequel (with two more to come). But how long is that one going to take?

The third film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, was actually shot simultaneously with The Way of Water. It was originally supposed to be released in 2023, but that obviously didn’t happen. Cameron is optimistic that it will make its updated December 2025 slot, however. “It’s in strong shape, I think,” he told Empire magazine this month. “We’ve doubled the number of shots finished at this stage of the game than we had on movie two [and] the films are about equal length. So that puts us well ahead of the curve, which is something I’ve never, frankly, experienced before.” No kidding.

Cameron added that it was “A little bit less nightmarish. We’re getting to the point where we’re actually getting good at this.” So, great news for all the Avatar fans out there. Cameron also promises that the film will take people to “places they won’t expect, but that will feel earned” and that there will be “a level of character and intrigue you haven’t seen before in an Avatar movie.”

After that, there are even more sequels to think about! Avatar is a phenomenon that isn’t going away anytime soon.


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Sarah Barrett
Sarah Barrett (she/her) is a freelance writer with The Mary Sue who has been working in journalism since 2014. She loves to write about movies, even the bad ones. (Especially the bad ones.) The Raimi Spider-Man trilogy and the Star Wars prequels changed her life in many interesting ways. She lives in one of the very, very few good parts of England.