James Cameron Is Willing to End 'Avatar' if 'Fire and Ash' Underperforms

The Avatar franchise has release dates secured through Avatar 5 in 2031, and creator James Cameron claimed he also has ideas for two more installments after that, though the filmmaker admitted that, if Avatar: Fire and Ash doesn’t perform how he hopes, this third film could be the end of the series. With the first film taking in $2.9 billion and 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water taking in $2.3 billion, the bar is high for the franchise’s financial achievements, so while Cameron didn’t set the benchmark, this third film would have to severely underperform to scrap future chapters.

Cameron made this admission on The Town podcast, where he confessed:

“I have no doubt in my mind that this movie will make money. The question is, does it make enough money to justify doing it again?”

While fans would understandably be disappointed with the next two announced movies being scrapped, with how long Cameron has spent in Pandora, he expressed that he would be perfectly fine walking away from the series, as he pointed out:

“I’ve been in Avatar land for 20 years, actually 30 years, because I wrote it in 1995, but I wasn’t working continuously on it for those first ten years. There was a brief flurry of interest in ’95, and then everybody said, ‘You’re out of your mind,’ and I shelved it for ten years. And then we got serious in 2005.”

Could ‘Avatar’ Continue Without Cameron?

20th Century Studios

13 years passed between Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water, while only three have passed since the last sequel and Fire and Ash. Since the series first debuted, the saga has established a large cultural footprint, akin to something like Star Wars. With George Lucas leaving behind the franchise he created, if Cameron is done, fans have wondered if he’d trust someone else to continue this series, but Cameron isn’t counting on it, as he explained:

“Look, I have choices there. There are levels in which I [can] immerse. I don’t think there’d ever be a version where there’s another Avatar movie that I didn’t produce closely. But, in terms of it taking over my life, that’s a threshold issue for me.”

Unlike the ways in which Way of Water left some plot points unresolved, Cameron confirmed that things tie themselves up more completely in Fire and Ash, but even if the live-action series comes to an end, audiences won’t be in the dark forever. He claimed:

“There is one open thread, and if it ends there theatrically, I’ll write a book. I’ll answer everybody’s question[s].”

Box office projections for Fire and Ash are a bit too far out to be able to predict, but with Avatar 4 not yet planned to release until 2029, Cameron will have a bit more time on his hands to see how the movie performs financially and culturally to determine if he’s going to stick with the series to complete his planned trajectory.