James Cameron on two decades of making 'Avatar' and the future he sees for movies
James Cameron first began developing
NEW YORK (AP) — 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.”
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.
CAMERON: It was sort of: Do the “Avatar” saga or follow my interests more. I knew that “Avatar” would be all-consuming, and it has been. When I set down that path, a reasonable projection was eight to 10 years to get it all written and do movie two and movie three together and get them out. But it’s actually turned out to be more than that. It was a major commitment and decision to make for me as a life choice. But the “Avatar” movies reach people and they reach people with positive messaging. Not just positive about the environment but positive from the standpoint of humanity, empathy, spirituality, our connection to each other. And they’re beautiful. There’s a kind of magnetic draw into the film. It almost feels like it’s being pulled out of the audience’s dreams and subconscious state.
CAMERON: I was 19. I was in college and I had a very vivid dream of a bioluminescent forest with glowing moss that reacted to your feet and these little spinning lizards that floated around. It’s all in the movie, by the way. The reason it’s in the movie is because I got up and painted it. That later became the inspiration, just a few years later, for a science-fiction script. I said, “Hey I got this idea for a planet where everything glows at night.” We wrote that in and it never went away.
Years after that, when I was the CEO of Digital Domain, I wanted to push Digital Domain to be able to create CG worlds, CG humanoid creatures using performance capture. I just threw the kitchen sink into the treatment called “Avatar.” So it came from almost a Machiavellian reason. I was trying to drive a business model for the development of CG. Of course, the answer I got from my technical team was: “We are not ready to make this film. We may not be ready for years.” But it still served that inspirational purpose, which was: Well, how do we get ready?
Comments