The day after the world premiere of “Avatar: Fire and Ash” in Los Angeles, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver — who wrote the third film in the multibillion-dollar movie series with director James Cameron — are huddled in a hotel restaurant, nursing large cups of chicken broth.
“I’m not a late-night person, and …” Silver says before turning to her husband. “What time did we get home last night? At 1?”
“It was close to one o’clock, yeah,” Jaffa says. “And by the way, we’re usually sleeping at 10.”
Silver playfully bats at Jaffa’s arm. “Don’t make us seem like oldies!”
The night before, Jaffa and Silver also sat side by side in the Dolby Theatre, nudging each other to look around and gauge the reactions of their fellow moviegoers as they returned to the far-flung moon of Pandora. They’d seen a cut of the film a few weeks prior, so they steeled themselves for the waves of emotion to come.
“If I had not, I’d still be sitting in the Dolby weeping,” Jaffa says.
In 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the family of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) suffered a tragic loss: Their eldest son, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), was killed in battle. “Fire and Ash” follows the Sully clan as they try to pick up the pieces.
“Grief is a great teacher. It teaches us how fragile life and connections are. The movie does a good job of dramatizing that,” Silver says. “The Na’vi are fantastical creatures, but they really do experience human emotions, and all humans struggle with mortality.”
The emotional plot sees Jake and Neytiri figuring out how to cope while their younger son, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), who narrates the story, grapples with survivor’s guilt. For all the wrenching moments, Jaffa and Silver insist that the arc is more hopeful than sorrowful.
“The great takeaway — and we’re living proof of it — is, as Lo’ak says in the voice-over, ‘The light always returns,’” Jaffa says.
It’s been a decade since Silver and Jaffa wrote that line, but they understand it more deeply today, as their son, Joe Jaffa, died last summer. He was 33.
“Joe was a bright light in the world. In his short time on the earth, he really affected a lot of people,” Silver says. “No matter what he went through — and he had health issues his whole life — he brought joy into the world.”
Jaffa chimes in: “He wanted to tell people that he didn’t lose his battle to cancer, that he fought it to a draw and took it down with him.”
Then, in January, the couple and their daughter, Franki, lost their home when wildfire engulfed their Pacific Palisades neighborhood. “To be very candid, the holiday season has been difficult, not just without our son but without the comforts of our home,” Jaffa says.
It’s another element echoed in “Fire and Ash,” which introduces a Na’vi clan whose home was destroyed in a volcanic eruption, and something the screenwriters couldn’t have fathomed when they landed the “Avatar” gig more than a decade ago.
Married since 1989 and writing partners since 1992, Jaffa and Silver have been blockbuster cinema mainstays since their scripts for 2011’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and 2015’s “Jurassic World” relaunched each franchise. But their work on “Fire and Ash” and “The Way of Water” was unlike anything they (or any screenwriters, for that matter) had done before. In 2013, Cameron hired them, as well as Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno, to help him expand the story of 2009’s “Avatar” into a proper sci-fi saga. They spent six months in a writers’ room hashing out what was planned to be three new films about the Sully family.
Jaffa and Silver speak of that period with a kind of wide-eyed awe. “Jim created a safe space for us to throw out stupid ideas, to try things out,” Silver says. “He invites us — the actors, the art department, everybody — to dream as big as they can and let him choose what he likes and figure out how to make it.”
But as Jaffa and Silver set about writing “Avatar 2” based on the extensive outline they’d all crafted together, their script began to expand well beyond the length of even a Cameron-sized movie. So they sent what they’d written to Cameron and asked him, “Should we start editing?”
“He just wrote back, ‘Take the hill,’” Jaffa recalls. “Which basically meant, keep going.”
Adds Silver: “And he knew what material was ahead of us. It’s not like we were making that material as we went.”
By the time they finished the full script in 2015, they estimate it approached 350 pages. “Insanely long,” Silver says with a knowing smile. “We never would write that long, but we had a mandate.” Ultimately, Cameron decided he wanted to include as much material as possible, so he split their mega-script into two movies, “The Way of Water” and “Fire and Ash.”
That led to some substantial creative changes: What Silver says “we used to call ‘the skirmish’” halfway through the story became the climactic battle at the end of “The Way of Water,” and Cameron gave that film the ending that Jaffa and Silver had written for “Fire and Ash.” But it also meant that Jaffa and Silver had the space to explore all the nuances of the emotional arc in service of the audience.
“People go to the movies for catharsis. And sci-fi and fantasy provide a huge opportunity to hold a mirror up to the human condition, and you can experience these difficult emotions at a safe distance,” Silver says. “The lights come up at the end of the movie. You throw away your popcorn and your soda; you’ve had a good cry. People need that.”
But she insists that “Fire and Ash” isn’t a melancholy experience.
“It’s about joy and triumph and connection,” Silver says. “That’s the Sully way. And that’s also the Jaffa way.”
December is here, and with it, a new Avatar movie. These movies keep making that holiday money, and the upcoming Fire & Ashlooks to keep that going. But if for whatever reason, it underperfomed and this was the last movie in the series? James Cameron’s got a contingency plan.
On a recent episode of Matt Belloni’s “The Town” podcast, the filmmaker said he was “absolutely” prepared to close the book on the franchiseif needed, acknowledging he’s been “in Avatar land for [30] years. If this is where it ends, cool.” He’s not open to completely handing things over to someone else—”I could produce it. I don’t think there’d ever be a version where there’s another Avatar movie that I didn’t produce closely,” he mentioned—but if need be, he’ll tie things up with a book.
Yes, really: there’s apparently just one open story thread at the end of Fire & Ash, and he’ll bring it to the page. But again, that’s only if this new movie underperforms. Why is this on his mind? He mentioned concerns of “forces” like “sequelitis,” streaming, and covid that would keep audiences away. Funnily enough, these were also concerns to be raised about The Way of Water in 2022, and look how that went. To his point, though, 2025’s not been the best year for franchise: audiences generally bounced on M3GAN 2.0 and Thunderbolts, to the point Blumhouse admitted it might’ve overestimated interest in its killer cyborg.
Then again, Wicked: For Goodand Zootopia 2 both look ready to make a killing at the box office over the next few weeks, so we’ll see how Avatar: Fire & Ash does when it lands on December 19.
The world premiere of Avatar: Fire and Ash takes place on Monday, December 1, in Los Angeles, CA. That’s almost three weeks before the film will be released in theaters on December 19, which means Disney is incredibly confident in the film. It has no problem with reactions leaking out early, presumably because the company thinks it has another James Cameron smash on its hands. Whether or not that’s true, we’ll find out soon.
That kind of confidence usually comes right from the top, though, and in a new interview, Avatar creator and director James Cameron talked about Disney CEO Bob Iger’s initial reaction to the film.
“[Iger] doesn’t weigh in until it’s something for me to show,” Cameron said to Puck News. “His comment when he watched [Fire and Ash] for the first time, even though it was at three hours, 23 minutes, not including credits at that point, so it’s gotten about 18 minutes shorter since then. He said, ‘Yeah, I know you’re going to keep chopping away at it. But it’s magnificent.’ He basically said, ‘I love this film.’ And it was interesting because there were other heads on the Zoom that were bringing up notes. And he said, ‘Yeah, you know, I didn’t have a problem with that.’ And he basically shot them down on their notes. And I was like, ‘Okay, we’re done here.’”
Well, not done, considering the film is now three hours and 17 minutes with credits. So Cameron did nip and tuck a bit. But Iger’s early reaction is an indicator of why the company is letting the film out into the public so early. Which, for context, is not usual. Most major Disney films don’t screen for press or industry until the week of release. But this is 18 days before release. Apparently, and hopefully, “it’s magnificent,” as Iger said.
We’ll have much, much more on Avatar: Fire and Ash in the coming weeks. It opens December 19.
It’s just over a month until Avatar: Fire and Ashtakes over the holiday weekend (and over 1/3 of your day), and Disney did what Disney often does: put out one final trailer during a football game.
Like the trailers before it, this one highlights main baddie Varung, leader of the Na’vi Ash People clan, and her teaming with Quaritch to further his war against Jake Sully and the Metkayina. That war will take place everywhere—on land, sea, and air—and gets complicated when they learn humans are beginning to physically acclimate to life on Pandora.
Avatar: Fire and Ash hits theaters on December 19, and tickets went on sale this morning.
A new batch of Avatar 3 posters has dropped, teasing what to expect from 20th Century Studios’ highly anticipated threequel to the 2022 epic blockbuster Avatar: The Way of Water. The movie is scheduled to arrive in theaters on December 19.
Avatar: Fire and Ash will debut in the same month as several high-profile movies such as The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, Blumhouse’s Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, Netflix’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Sony Pictures’ Anaconda, and A24’s Marty Supreme.
Who is in the new Avatar 3 posters?
The posters hinted at another epic aerial fight involving Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri, as she shows off her archery skills. Besides Neytiri, one poster features her and Jake’s son Lo’ak, who will also be stepping into battle to help his parents fight against new enemies. In addition, one of the posters also teases the introduction of the movie’s newest villain in the form of Varang, leader of the Ash People clan. In the upcoming sequel, while continuing to deal with the grief of losing one of their own, the Sully family will encounter new and familiar enemies threatening the Pandora.
Avatar: Fire and Ash is once again directed by Cameron, who co-wrote the screenplay with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. The ensemble cast includes returning stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Jack Champion, Bailey Bass, Edie Falco, and more. Just like the 2022 movie, the third installment will also be over three hours long.
Cameron previously said that the upcoming sequel will explore “different cultures from those I have already shown. The fire will be represented by the ‘Ash People.’ I want to show the Na’vi from another angle because, so far, I have only shown their good sides.”
Zoe Saldaña said in an interview with Beyond Noise that James Cameron is “considering a documentary about the making” of the “Avatar” movies, which the Oscar-winning actor is keen on because it will “finally give us a chance to explain, in a meticulous way, why performance capture is the most empowering form of acting.”
“It gives us the credit, the ability to own 100 percent of our performance on screen,” said Saldaña, who has long been a champion of motion capture acting and has been outspoken about award bodies such as the Oscars needing to consider it. “With animation, you might go into the studio for [a few] sessions; that’s as much as they’ll need you for the whole movie. You go into a studio, however you’re dressed, and you lend your voice, right? Performance capture means that ‘Avatar’ wouldn’t exist if Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, myself, and the entire cast didn’t get up and put those dots on our faces.”
“We put on that little unitard with all those dots on it, and step into a volume – that’s what we call the set – that’s rigged on the ceiling, with all these cameras in measured positions,” she added. “They’re all pointing into this space that finds us, and feeds that information into the system that is Pandora.”
Saldaña plays Neytiri in the “Avatar” films, which include 2009’s “Avatar,” 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” and the upcoming “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” Cameron intends to make two more “Avatar” movies.
“It takes an average of seven years between [each ‘Avatar’ film],” Saldaña said. “From the archery, the martial arts, the free diving, the scuba diving – so that you can hold your breath under water for longer than five minutes – to the language [James] conceived out of thin air, to physically training with former gymnasts, circus performers, and acrobats so you can learn how to walk like an extraterrestrial human species… That’s all us, and a group of incredible stunt actors that make our characters feel bionic. God bless them. With the technology that Jim creates, he gives the artist the power of complete ownership.”
Saldaña spoke to The Independent last year and called out the Oscars for continuing to snub motion capture performances. Be it the actors in the “Avatar” movies or Andy Serkis’ acclaimed motion capture work as Gollum in “The Lord of Rings” and Caesar in “Planet of the Apes,” motion capture acting has yet to break into the Oscar races.
“Old habits die hard, and when you have old establishments, it’s really hard to bring forward change,” Saldaña said on the topic. “And I understand that, so I’m not bitter about it, but it is quite deflating when you give 120% of yourself into something. I mean, not winning is ok, not being nominated is ok, but when you’re overlooked and then minimized and completely disregarded…”
Cameron told Variety as part of a Saldaña cover story last year that the Oscars are overdue to recognize her work as Neytiri in the “Avatar” franchise.
“I’ve worked with Academy Award-winning actors, and there’s nothing that Zoe’s doing that’s of a caliber less than that,” the director said. “But because in my film she’s playing a ‘CG character,’ it kind of doesn’t count in some way, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. She can go from regal to, in two nanoseconds, utterly feral. The woman is ferocious. She is a freaking lioness.”
“Avatar: Fire and Ash” opens in theaters Dec. 19 from Disney and 20th Century Studios.
James Cameron prefers not to revisit his movies after they’ve opened in theaters. “I usually have a moratorium of a couple of years where I just don’t want to think about it,” he says. “There’s a certain point when you’ve been away from where you could start to be more of an audience and less of a picky filmmaker.”
The filmmaker had to break that rule, however, with 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” because of the impending release of the third film in the series, “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” in December.
“We’re going through the finish of the VFX now [on “Fire and Ash”] — we have been, really, for the last two years, but we’re really coming down to the wire now,” he says. “And I want to be thematically consistent about the way music was used and underscore during dialogue scenes and things like that. So I have rewatched it. It’s a pretty good ride, I have to say!”
Audiences will have their own chance to re-watch “The Way of Water” on the big screen on Oct. 3, with the film — which grossed $2.3 billion worldwide — is re-released into theaters in anticipation of “Fire and Ash.” The former film traces the family saga of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) after the events of 2009’s “Avatar,” when they defeated the military assault on the Na’vi by Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). In the sequel, set 16 years later, Jake and Neytiri have a clan of five children, including an adopted daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), born from the inert Na’vi avatar of Weaver’s deceased human character from the 2009 film, Dr. Grace Augustine, and a quasi-adopted human son, Spider (Jack Champion), who was orphaned when his biological parents, including Quaritch, died in battle. Quaritch is resurrected in “The Way of Water” into his own Na’vi avatar, and he resumes his relentless pursuit of the Sully family, which puts Spider in the middle of the conflict.
In an interview with Variety, Cameron discussed what else from “The Way of Water” will pay off in “Fire and Ash,” the major change he made to “Fire and Ash” after he’d finished filming, how the future of the “Avatar” franchise (Disney has a fourth and fifth film dated for 2029 and 2031) could affect his plans to direct a feature adaptation of the book “Ghosts of Hiroshima,” and why he is working to make the visual effects process a more “creative culture.” (Note: This interview was conducted on Sept. 26, before the controversy started over AI performance simulation Tilly Norwood.)
James Cameron on the set of “Avatar: The Way of Water.”
Mark Fellman / 20th Century Studios
When you re-watch your films, do you find that allows you to discover new things about the movie that you hadn’t noticed before?
It does in the sense that you start to realize how much of filmmaking is subconscious and can’t be quantified. My job all day long is to quantify minutia. I’m looking at a VFX shot: “OK, you see the way his foot comes down on that one fern and the way it brushes aside. I’m not quite buying that. I think you should re-sim that.” I mean, it’s endless. It’s every detail, every blade of grass, every flicker of fire, all of the lighting interactions, and you get so down into the weeds that it takes stepping back and seeing the film to realize that there’s a big unconscious driver that’s running underneath all of that detail that’s telling you when you’ve got the essence of the moment. And so when I see the film, I go, “Oh, that actually works. I actually feel what I’m supposed to be feeling.” I guess what I see after the fact is, yeah, I get sucked down the rabbit hole of the details, but I don’t sacrifice the essence.
How is the VFX process going for you now?
In fact, as I’m working with the VFX people, I’m trying to create a new culture around that — not a technical culture, but a creative culture. When I’m talking to the effects sequence supervisors and the animators and the lighters, it’s like, “What is the most important thing about the shot and why? What is its narrative purpose? What are we saying with this shot? Now, don’t think in shots. Think in flow.” I’m trying to get them to think in flow. Why does this shot exist? I could do anything. I could not have it in the movie. I could have done a completely different shot. Why do you think I did that shot?
What’s the goal for you?
I want them to internalize for themselves that storytelling process. They go way down the rabbit hole, much deeper than me, on the technical side, and are far more capable technically than I am. So I want to give them a little bit of that storytelling magic dust to own for themselves. And it’s working. It started on “The Way of Water,” and it’s continued a lot more on “Fire and Ash.” It’s what I call a first look final. It’s the craziest thing in the world. The creative culture is so strong across all these artists that I can look at a shot for review for the very first time and say “It’s done.” That is the craziest thing. Anybody that’s worked in VFX is going to be saying “Whaaaat?”
Now, they may be on version 400 but they’ve had enough input previously that they’re now working within a culture that encourages the creativity and the specificity of our “Avatar” world and our characters. So this idea of really encouraging them to think as storytellers is really paying off. And this is why the Gen AI stuff is never going to take the place of that. We need our artists. It’s artists in control of the process, right?
So it’s actually become a kind of crazily joyful finish. You know, it was a fraught production, let’s face it, but it’s been a kind of a joyful finish, because it’s really starting to resonate and fire on all cylinders, and we’re getting a lot of first look finals, which is nuts.
You shot most of the material for “The Way of Water” and “Fire & Ash” from 2017 to 2019, right?
Yeah, we started September of 2017. We went for 18 months, but we did both movies, all of it, other than some planned reshoots and some places where I got creative and wrote some new scenes. But the vast majority — call it 95% — was shot in that 18 month window. That was Sigourney playing 15-year-old Kiri across both movies, which actually worked great, because she’s got a story arc across the two movies. There was a kind of a major story arc, where 2 and 3 really tell one big story. And then ultimately, if I get so lucky and I make 4 and 5, 4 and 5 tell one big story. So it kind of stops for a beat after the end of 3. I don’t mean we’ll necessarily stop in production, but the story kind of stops and then it jumps forward in time a little bit.
So how that distance affect your relationship to the material? With the kids especially, they’re much older now than when you were first filming.
It creates this weird cognitive dissonance, where I’m always shocked by how long it’s been since we actually captured the moment. Because there’s a sense of immediacy. I’m in the story, working on this scene. It feels very immediate. I can remember where everybody was standing. I can remember even secondary characters in the background, which of our troop characters played each one of those secondary characters. It feels like I did it last week. It was five or six years ago.
Fortunately, the cast are just as energetic. I just was doing press with them last week. They’re just as pumped and passionate about their characters and what we’re doing as they ever were, and can’t wait to get on to the next one — if we should get so lucky as to make some money with these now that are being re-released and being released. So the energy is there, the excitement’s still there, but it’s a weird cognitive dissonance.
Sam Worthington in “Avatar: Fire and Ash”
Courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Does that dissonance wind up affecting the film?
The good news is I don’t really second guess my creative impulses. Unless, and this happened a little bit on “Fire and Ash,” I’m looking at it going, you know, I’m not that much of a genius screenwriter. There’s something a little off here in the storytelling. And so, our Toruk is back [in “Fire and Ash”], right? You know, the big bird that Jake rides [in the climax of the first “Avatar”]. I’ve always been waiting for the question, “Why doesn’t he just go get the big red bird and kill everybody like he used to do?” Because that doesn’t exist in “The Way of Water” at all.
I got a big scoop here. It didn’t exist in “Fire and Ash.” And I went, “Oh, he’s got to go get the bird.” Come on! I was saving it for a later film. I was like, “Fuck that! He should get the bird. Get the Toruk.” There’s something in Jake’s destiny that requires it, right? So I just re-wrote it, and we went back and we shot two or three scenes around that concept, and I threw some stuff out and stuck that in. And we’re at three hours, big surprise! But it works beautifully, and the actors were super-excited about that idea. It’s like, oh, okay, that feels right, you know?
So it’s not set in stone. It’s a constantly evolving creative process. And that’s what keeps you vigorous and engaged.
Based on the “Fire & Ash” trailers, it’s clear that Spider and Kiri play crucial roles in the third film. Are there any other elements introduces in “The Way of Water” that audiences should especially pay attention to when re-watching the film?
You’ve got the primary couple, Jake and Neytiri. Obviously at the end of “The Way of Water” — three years in, I don’t think we have to worry about spoilers — their eldest son dies. In the typical universe of superheroes and so on, grief is not really dealt with, because it’s an impediment to all the cool stuff you want to see. But I thought, Nah, I want to be very authentic about these people emotionally. I want them to be real. I want that to inform and put pressure on their relationship. Because in the real world, when parents lose a child — I’m a parent of five. Sam has three. Zoe has three sons. You know, it’s the inconceivable thing for all of us that we all fear. What would that do? In the real world, it tears marriages apart. There’s blame, there’s grief that gets in the way and a lot of marriages don’t survive that. So we got the ultimate love story, kind of Romeo and Juliet, you know, Smith and Pocahontas on another planet. And then it gets challenged. Are they going to survive as a relationship?
Anything else?
You’ve got these new characters, Spider, Kiri, Lo’ak, they all come to real fruition in movie 3. But the beautiful thing about this re-release is you get to remind yourself of how important all these relationships are, and then we pay them all off — sometimes for good, sometimes not so good. But the point is, they’re on a greater arc. Kiri’s arc, very important. Spider’s arc, I think you could tell from the trailer, we’re going places with him. He’s also the glue that glues all the other relationships together. Jake and Quaritch, they’d just be two guys trying to kill each other for six hours of two movies. Sorry, that’s boring. Where it gets nuanced is when they’ve got this kid between them, and they’re the two different father figures, and sometimes they have to work together to keep him alive. It becomes much more nuanced as a result of these younger characters. And by the way, if you’re a kid, you’re going follow them. It’s not a family movie about the parents. It’s a family movie about the kids.
Jack Champion in “Avatar: The Way of Water”
Courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Finally, what is the timeline for you to direct “Ghosts of Hiroshima”? You’ve said that right now, there’s nothing keeping you from directing the next two “Avatar” movies.
Well, I first of all, “Ghosts of Hiroshima” was written by a friend of mine. I gave them permission to announce that I had bought it to turn into a film, but I haven’t written a script yet. So once I get a script I like, then I can answer that question, but that’s not the case right now. Now, I’ve got a couple of other things that haven’t been announced that I also want to do, and it’s a question of — that one [“Ghosts of Hiroshima”] I will direct. Doesn’t matter when I do it, I’ll direct that one. There are others that I may or may not direct. And the big swing in all of this is, do we make any money with “Avatar 3”? I mean, we’ll make some money. But the question is, what kind of a profit margin, if any, is there, and how much of an inducement is that to continue on in this universe? Or maybe we wait a while until we figure out how to bring costs down. Because production costs have spiraled over the last few years, especially in VFX. Everything’s gone up an enormous amount, and it’s starting to close out the type of films that I like to make.
So there’s an argument for taking a pause and figuring that out. There’s an argument for going out and doing some smaller, more personal film in the meantime, while that gets figured out. There’s an argument, in wild success, for us just launching and just going straight into [“Avatar 4” and “Avatar 5”] and I figure out a production methodology where I have a bit of a hiatus where I can make another film. And there’s another argument that says just go make those two damn movies and figure everything else out when I’m 80.
So where are you in those arguments?
If you’re interpreting from that that I’m at a bit of a crossroads here — it’s not all mapped out. You know, life isn’t like that. I am at a bit of a crossroads here, and I’m going to have to see what draws me to what as I go forward. The only thing I can tell you right now, I’m not going to stop being a director and a storyteller. That’s the only thing I can confirm at this stage.
With that blistering Avatar: Fire and Ash preview arriving this week, fans are shifting into extreme excitment mode over the December release. To capitalize on that, the previous film in James Cameron’s series, 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water, will be bringing some Fire and Ash with it as part of its theatrical re-release next week—but there’s a catch.
Sneak peeks at the much-anticipated new movie will play after The Way of Water screenings. But as Variety explains it, “Not every screening will offer the same experience. There are three different, brand new clips from Fire and Ash that will play after The Way of Water, but each screening will only play one of the three.”
For most fans, this won’t be a big deal; it’s a little bonus on top of getting to spend three-plus hours with The Way of Water on the big screen again. But Avatar megafans might be a bit bummed, since there’s no guarantee returning to the theater for multiple viewings will yield a different Fire and Ash clip.
The good news, however, is that you won’t have to wait too long just to watch the whole damn movie. Avatar: Fire and Ash will at long last hit theaters December 19.
Avater: The Way of Water returns to theaters October 3-10.
20th Century Studios has released a new trailer for “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the third film in James Cameron‘s “Avatar” series, which is set to release on Dec. 19. The trailer shows the return of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his family, this time at war with an enemy Na’vi tribe on Pandora.
Alongside Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Bailey Bass, Britain Dalton, Trinity Bliss, Jack Champion and Edie Falco are among the returning cast members. Meanwhile, Michelle Yeoh, Oona Chaplin and David Thewlis will make their debut in the series as new characters.
The first “Avatar” released in 2009 and became the highest grossing film of all time at the worldwide box office. It still holds that record, with a lifetime gross of over $2.9 billion. It’s sequel, “Avatar: The Way of the Water,” came out over a decade later in 2022 and grossed $2.3 billion at the box office, surpassing Cameron’s own “Titanic” as the third highest grossing film of all time. The two “Avatar” titles’ performances are only split by “Avengers: Endgame,” which grossed $2.7 billion in 2019.
Documentaries aside, the “Avatar” movies have been Cameron’s only directorial features of the 21st century. Cameron began developing “Avatar” in the 1990s, but it took over a decade for technology to catch up with the concept. The films’ special effects are handled by Weta Workshop and showcase pioneering filmmaking technology in motion capture and CGI.
A fourth “Avatar” movie is already expected to release in 2029, and a fifth in 2031.
