James Cameron’s Next Movie After Avatar 3 Could Be His Biggest Flop Yet

James Cameron, the guy who once said he could happily live inside the Avatar franchise forever, is looking past Pandora after Avatar 3. And the project he wants to chase next is about as far from banshees and bioluminescence as it gets.

The pivot: from Avatar to Hiroshima

Fueled in part by the success of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, Cameron is pushing to adapt Charles R. Pellegrino's book 'Ghosts of Hiroshima.' He knows exactly how commercial that sounds: not very. In fact, he told The Hollywood Reporter he fully expects it might be the smallest moviegoing turnout of his career.

'F*ck 'em, I don't care. I'm going to tell this story — because why? Because nobody else is doing it. If you want to haul off and make the film, I'll hand you the book. But nobody's putting their hand up to do this. It'll probably be the least-attended movie I ever make. It's not a pretty sight what a nuclear bomb does to human beings.'

Why this story, and why now

Speaking with Deadline, Cameron said the motivation is simple: people are forgetting what nuclear weapons actually do to human bodies. With wars still flaring around the world, he thinks it's the right time to make audiences confront that reality again.

He also stressed what the film will not be. He does not want a political blame game. He wants to act as a clear-eyed witness to what happened to civilians, period. He even acknowledged the obvious: he's a non-Japanese director telling a Japanese story, he doesn't speak the language, and that comes with responsibility.

His goal, as he put it, is to keep the memory alive so those deaths are not forgotten — because forgetting is how we repeat the worst things at a bigger scale.

What the movie would actually look like

Expect zero sugarcoating. Cameron is not planning the kind of cathartic spectacle he built his career on. No fantasy relief, no heroic escape valves, no glossy thrills. He wants to show the raw aftermath of a nuclear detonation on human beings. He did say he hopes to find some beauty in the human experience — the shared-planet kind — but made it clear this won't morph into a genre piece. His own comparison: there are no mutants or cool vehicles cruising around after a bomb like it's a Godzilla movie.

The book he wants to adapt

• Title: Ghosts of Hiroshima
• Author: Charles R. Pellegrino
• Published: August 5, 2025
• Genre: Personal narrative/history
• Goodreads rating: 4.18/5

The uncomfortable bet

For a filmmaker who basically prints money and invents new cameras between meals, this is a sharp turn: purpose over profit. He knows a film about Hiroshima's real human cost is going to be a tough sit for casual audiences, and he sounds genuinely fine with that. The point, to him, is the memory — not the opening weekend.

One more Cameron note

While he eyes Ghosts of Hiroshima, Cameron still has his blue-people obligations: Avatar: Fire and Ash is now playing in theaters.