Oscar winning filmmaker James Cameron must be on seventh heaven these days after the phenomenal box-office success of ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’, which has become the third highest grossing movie of all time and is just behind ‘Avengers: Endgame’ and the first ‘Avatar’ movie.
The Academy Award nominated film’s splendid box office performance has paved the way for its next three sequels ‘Avatar 3’, ‘Avatar 4’, and ‘Avatar 5’ which are slated to release in theatres in the years 2024, 2026, and 2028, respectively (if all goes as per plan).
A few weeks back, we had expressed our desperate willingness for James Cameron to invest his creative energies on directing a non-Avatar movie. Because otherwise, James Cameron’s next non-Avatar film won’t release any time before the year 2029 or maybe even 2030!
And it seems that our prayers and the prayers of millions of fans have been heard by the maestro filmmaker himself. Because the ‘Titanic’ helmer has recently revealed (via LA Times) that he wants to make a film on the Hiroshima bombings before kicking off production for ‘Avatar 4’. That is, within the time which he might have between ‘Avatar 3’ and ‘Avatar 4’.
The potential Hiroshima film will be an adaptation of Charles R. Pellegrino’s book titled ‘The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back’. As the name suggests, the book revolves around the bombings on Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War-II from the point of view of the survivors.
Regarding the planned Hiroshima bombings-based film, James Cameron has stated that “We live in a more precarious world than we thought we did. I think the Hiroshima film would be as timely as ever, if not more so. It reminds people what these weapons really do when they’re used against human targets.”
This is not the first time James Cameron has expressed his willingness to direct the Hiroshima project. The film adaptation has been on the back of his mind for more than a decade. But things apparently didn’t take a concrete shape back then.
Now, let’s all keep our fingers crossed and hope that James Cameron would not dedicate the rest of his career as a director for the forthcoming ‘Avatar’ sequels. Not that the ‘Avatar’ films are not well-made, but by the end of this decade, wouldn’t you want James Cameron to direct a non-Avatar movie like the Hiroshima film? What’s your take on that?