James Cameron on two decades of making 'Avatar' and the future he sees for movies

James Cameron recently turned 71 as he brought his third “Avatar” film, “Fire and Ash,” to the finish line.

Cameron first began developing “Avatar” more than 30 years ago. He started working on the first film in earnest 20 years ago. Production on “Fire and Ash,” which ran concurrently with 2022’s “The Way of Water,” got underway eight years ago.

By any measure, “Avatar” is one of the largest undertakings ever by a filmmaker. It’s maybe the only project that could make “Titanic” look like a modest one-off. Cameron has dedicated a huge chunk of his life to it. Now, as he prepares to unveil the latest chapter of his Na’vi opus on Dec. 19, Cameron is approaching what he calls a crossroads.

“As you get older you start to think of time in a slightly different way,” Cameron says from his 5,000-acre organic farm in New Zealand. “It’s not an infinite resource.”

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Two more “Avatar” films are already written and have release dates, in 2029 and 2031. Right now, though, Cameron is focused on completing “Fire and Ash,” which is almost guaranteed to be the biggest movie of the fall. To get “Avatar” — a franchise already worth $5.2 billion in worldwide tickets sales — back in the minds of moviegoers, “The Way of Water” will also be rereleased Oct. 3.

“As I told the brass at Disney, we’re right at the glide slope to land right on time for delivery,” Cameron says. “The first film was a nightmare. Movie two was hectic. But here, I keep having to pinch myself because it’s all going well. The film is strong.”

There may be no filmmaker more at the nexus of past and future blockbuster making than Cameron. “Avatar: Fire and Ash” will arrive as Hollywood is reconciling itself to a new theatrical normal. In a movie industry of shrinking ambition, “Avatar,” an original spectacle that once was the wave of the future, is already beginning to look like an endangered species.

In a recent interview, Cameron reflected on his history with “Avatar” and what’s next for him, including a planned adaptation of Charles Pellegrino’s “Ghosts of Hiroshima.” For Cameron, most of his work is likely to touch on one of what he calls “the big three”: Nuclear weapons, machine super intelligence and climate change.

“Avatar,” a family saga that grows more complicated and darker in “Fire and Ash,” relates to the latter. The films are environmental parables, set in a verdant faraway world. Sustainability, community, connection to nature — these are some of the pillars of Cameron’s life right now, in the movies and outside them.

“I’m just a humble movie farmer,” he says, smiling, “who’s also a farmer farmer.”