James Cameron Says He’ll Walk Away From ‘Avatar’ If ‘Fire and Ash’ Flops: “I’ll Write a Book”

What happens if Avatar: Fire and Ash doesn’t rake in enough cash to convince Disney to greenlight Avatar 4 and 5? According to creator James Cameron, he’s fully prepared to step away — and if fans need closure, he’s more than willing to wrap things up in a book instead of another movie.

The Avatar films have always carried eye-watering price tags thanks to their heavy VFX demands, but historically that investment has paid off big. The franchise has brought in billions across multiple releases. With Fire and Ash arriving in December, Disney is counting on another mega-hit — and Cameron needs one if he’s going to finish the saga he mapped out for the next six years.

Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Cameron admitted he’s feeling the pressure, especially given the “forces” working against movie theaters in 2025.

He warned about potential “sequelitis,” adding, “People tend to dismiss sequels unless it’s the third Lord of the Rings film and you want to see what happens to everybody, which in my mind this is — this is the culmination of a story arc, but that may not be how the public sees it.”

He also pointed to the “one-two punch” of streaming and Covid, noting that moviegoing is still only about 75% of what it was in 2019.

Cameron wouldn’t reveal the movie’s exact budget, but he didn’t pretend it was cheap. Instead, he joked, “It is one metric fk ton of money, which means we have to make two metric fk tons of money to make a profit.”

He added, “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?”

And that’s where things get real: Cameron said he’s “absolutely” ready to walk away if Fire and Ash doesn’t hit expectations.

“I’ve been in Avatar land for 20 years,” he said. “Actually 30 years because I wrote it in ‘95… Yeah, absolutely, sure. If this is where it ends, cool.”

But what about lingering story threads?

“There’s one open thread. I’ll write a book!” he quipped.

One thing he won’t do? Hand off the franchise to someone else. That’s an “absolutely not!”
“I have choices there,” he explained. “There are levels in which I immerse… I don’t think there’d ever be a version where there’s another Avatar movie that I didn’t produce closely.”

Avatar 4 is currently slated for December 21, 2029, with Avatar 5 following December 19, 2031 — which would put Cameron, now 71, pushing 80 by the time Pandora’s story comes to an end.

The original Avatar remains the highest-grossing film of all time (not adjusted for inflation), topping out at $2.9 billion. Its follow-up, Avatar: The Way of Water, earned $2.3 billion, making it the third-highest grossing film ever — just ahead of Cameron’s own Titanic.

But can Fire and Ash get anywhere near those numbers? The only film to cross $2 billion since Way of Water was Ne Zha 2, and the theatrical landscape has changed dramatically in just the past few years.

The question now: can Cameron pull off another Pandora-sized miracle?