James Cameron might actually make a non-Avatar movie someday, maybe, schedule permitting

Assuming he can dry off from all that time in the majestic waters of Pandora, Oscar-winning and Na’vi-obsessed filmmaker James Cameron is plotting his post-Avatar future—should such an opportunity afford itself. Deadline reports that Cameron purchased the rights to the book Ghosts Of Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino, and he plans on adapting it into an “uncompromising theatrical film” that will be made as soon as Cameron’s Avatar schedule allows him to get out of the pool long enough to make a different kind of movie. Thankfully, Cameron, who is still on the hook for three more Avatars, has some buffer; the novel Ghosts Of Hiroshima has yet to come out.

Ghosts Of Hiroshima is the sequel to Pellegrino’s 2010 book, Last Train From Hiroshima. His work follows the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki through interviews and documents of daily life before, during, and after the explosion. One of Last Train’s focuses is Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only known person by the Japanese government to have survived both explosions. Ghosts Of Hiroshima, the book, will come out in August 2025 for the 80th anniversary of the attacks. Using both books in the series, the movie will follow Yamaguchi’s journey from Hiroshima, where he was visiting on business when the bomb fell, to his hometown in Nagasaki.

Speaking to Deadline, Cameron, whose fear of nuclear weapons inspired the spine of his Terminator movies, says he’s been “wrestling” with how to make Last Train “over the years.” Cameron met Yamaguchi days before his death, further emboldening the director. “[Yamaguchi] was handing the baton of his personal story to us, so I have to do it. I can’t turn away from it,” Cameron said.

Cameron, who hasn’t made an Earth-based, Eywa-free movie since 1997, was largely expected to remain sequestered in his self-imposed Pandorian prison for the rest of his career. Cameron promises to start the film as soon as he gets a break from the three Avatar movies he’s making, the same ones delayed by over a decade as Cameron invented the filmmaking techniques necessary for his vision. It’s certainly nice to imagine a world where Cameron makes movies that don’t have 13-foot-tall cat people that talk to space whales—though we’re more than happy to enjoy Cameron’s flights of fancy if they’re going to be as good as Way Of Water. Given his commitment to the Avatar project, it’s hard to imagine him doing anything else with his career. Still, he has begun loosening his grip, stating that he’ll “probably be handing the baton” for Avatars six and seven. Maybe the director will trade the splendor of Pandora for our humble planet again. It also pays to trust him at his word. After all, if James Cameron promises a movie, it will probably gross a billion dollars.