James Cameron Unveils Avatar 3’s Staggering VFX Shot Count
James Cameron says Avatar 3 is stacked with a staggering volume of VFX shots—more than many mega-blockbusters, even Avengers: Endgame—offering a rare peek at the film’s massive effects machine.
James Cameron has never been shy about flexing the tech, but even by his standards this is wild: Avatar 3 is stacked with an enormous number of visual effects shots, the kind of figure that makes other mega-budget movies look modest.
The number Cameron put on it
'We're just finishing up Avatar 3 with 3,500 CG shots.'
That line comes from a new chat he did with Vanity Fair. And he wasn't being coy about what those shots cover. It's not just blue people. It's the creatures. The environments. Down to the leaves and blades of grass. If it exists on Pandora, odds are it's built and rendered.
How that compares to other big swings
- The Abyss (1989): Cameron's first real dance with CGI. He promised to keep the VFX count small and delivered 42 shots — and even that took a year to finish the last few.
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991): The footprint got bigger from The Abyss, and the tech took a leap, but still nowhere near today's volume.
- Avengers: Endgame (2019): Around 2,500 VFX shots, per VFX supervisor Dan DeLeeuw, covering everything from full CG environments to heavy character work like Smart Hulk and Thanos.
- Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021): Roughly 2,800 effects shots, with Snyder calling it a full-on VFX extravaganza back in 2020.
- Avatar 3: Approximately 3,500 CG shots, per Cameron. That's a lot of render farms.
The takeaway
Put simply: Avatar 3 is operating at a scale that dwarfs even the most VFX-heavy superhero fare. Cameron says the new film isn't just pushing past his earlier work — it's blowing by it. When you're building nearly everything in the frame, the shot count spikes fast. It's a nerdy production detail, but it tells you why these movies live in post for so long and why the pipeline has to be airtight.
Cameron also looked back at where this all started. On The Abyss, he kept the CG ambitions lean and still sweated out those 42 shots for a year. Now he's casually talking about 3,500. That escalation says everything about where blockbuster filmmaking is — and how far he intends to keep pushing it.