Think Avatar 4 Is Next After Fire and Ash? Think Again

James Cameron might take a detour before heading back to Pandora. And not a small one. If Zoe Saldana is right, the next project out of Avatar world could be a full-on making-of documentary instead of Avatar 4.

Zoe Saldana says Cameron is eyeing an Avatar doc

In a chat with Beyond Noise, Saldana said Cameron is considering a documentary about how Avatar gets made. She is very into the idea, mostly because she wants the spotlight on performance capture, which she calls an empowering form of acting. Her point: this isn’t just voice work. The cast is there, head to toe, building the performances you see onscreen before the CG magic gets layered on.

"It gives us the credit, the ability to own 100 percent of our performance on screen."

Saldana broke down the basics in plain terms. With traditional animation, actors might pop into a booth for a few sessions and call it a day. With performance capture, it’s more like theater: they suit up in those dot-covered unitards, step onto a stage called the volume, and act out everything. The set is wired with a grid of cameras tracking their every movement, which gets piped into the system that ultimately becomes Pandora. It’s the kind of behind-the-scenes process that usually gets buried.

The workload behind Neytiri (and everyone else)

None of this is small lift for Saldana or her castmates. To play Neytiri, she trained in archery and martial arts, learned free diving and scuba, and even re-learned how to move to read as an "extraterrestrial human species." And if you want to talk about ownership of the performance, she name-checked the whole crew of leads: Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, herself, and the rest of the cast. In her view, Avatar doesn’t exist without those physical, in-the-volume performances.

So what happens to Avatar 4?

Cameron has spoken about making Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 after the third film, Avatar: Fire and Ash. But based on Saldana’s comments, that documentary might slide in first. It would be very James Cameron to pause between sequels for a tech-forward side quest, and honestly, it would be useful context for how these movies actually get made.

Dates to keep straight

• Avatar: Fire and Ash (the third film) hits theaters on December 19, 2025.
• Avatar 4 is currently slated for December 21, 2029.
• Avatar 5 is set for December 19, 2031.

In short: Fire and Ash is locked in, Cameron’s an Oscar winner who loves a tech challenge, and Saldana is campaigning to show the work behind the work. If that doc happens, expect it before Avatar 4. This tidbit comes from Saldana’s Beyond Noise interview and was flagged by Dan Girolamo at SuperHeroHype.