James Cameron Reveals His Avatar Plan If Fire & Ash Flops

Avatar: Fire and Ash seems poised to be a major hit, but James Cameron makes clear that he’s prepared to wrap the franchise’s story up in an unexpected way should the film underperform.

Speaking on The Town podcast with host Matthew Belloni, Cameron reveals that, despite the success of so many of his past films, he’s still nervous about any new movie he makes, and that includes Fire and Ash. Belloni highlights the factors working against the third Avatar movie, including a downturn in theatrical movie-going, a shorter gap between franchise releases, and the movie being harder to market.

Cameron himself agrees, revealing that he’s well aware of the challenges that franchise sequels face as theatrical prospects:

“Sequelitis. 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.”

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) was the end of a trilogy, but Fire and Ash‘s story is the third installment in a five-movie arc. The director’s comment makes clear, however, that this upcoming film can serve as the end of the franchise if need be. And regarding whether he’s okay with that outcome, it seems like Cameron’s already made his peace with it:

“Absolutely. I’ve been in Avatar land for 20 years, actually 30 years because I wrote it in ’95, but I wasn’t working continuously on it for those first ten years.”

Addressing Fire and Ash‘s potential role as a franchise-ender, Cameron reveals that the film wraps up almost all major plot threads for Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and their family. The one thread left unresolved can be tied up with a smaller multimedia release. “If this is where it ends, cool,” Cameron says. “There is one open thread. I’ll write a book.“

Something else Cameron has long toyed with is whether he’ll address Avatar 4 and 5 if Fire and Ash does end up being a success. Though he’s still open to passing the baton to another director, he makes clear that he would still be very closely involved in any future Avatar movies:

“Absolutely not. Look, I have choices there. There are levels in which I immerse. I could produce. I don’t think there’d ever be 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.”

The challenges facing Fire and Ash that Belloni brings up are worth considering. Avatar: The Way of Water came 13 years after the first movie, and it benefited from a great deal of anticipation and major leaps in terms of the movie’s visual presentation of the world of Pandora. The third movie is releasing after a gap of only three years, and the visual upgrade this time around won’t be as pronounced.

In terms of box office, it seems unlikely that Fire and Ash will top The Way of Water, which currently stands as the third-highest-grossing movie of all time at $2.3 billion. Still, early signs suggest it won’t be landing with a thud.

Box office projections for Avatar 3 just arrived, and the film is predicted to open to around $110 million, with estimates starting around $100 million and going up to $130 million. Fire and Ash, then, is projected to open behind The Way of Water‘s $134 million, but these early figures are still promising.

Worth noting with Avatar is that, unlike MCU releases, these movies are not heavily front-loaded at the box office. The first two movies both had relatively modest openings given their massive budgets, but they enjoyed exceptionally strong legs at the box office over the weeks and months that followed.

Whether Avatar: Fire and Ash will serve as the end of the franchise, then, isn’t something that will become clear until well into 2026. If this is the end for Pandora and the Sully family, though, Cameron’s comment affirms that audiences should, at the very least, be getting a conclusion that doesn’t leave things feeling unfinished.