James Cameron has suggested the next instalment of Avatar will be emotional as his wife reportedly cried for four hours after watching it.
Although Avatar: Fire and Ash will not be released until December 2025, Cameron has already started screening it to “a few selected people”.
The director has been hard at work on the next instalment of his long-running blockbuster franchise since the release of sequel The Way of Water in 2022.
According to the filmmaker: “The feedback has been [that] it’s definitely the most emotional and maybe the best of the three so far.”
Speaking to Empire, Cameron said his wife, Suzy Amis Cameron, has had one of the strongest reactions so far.
“My wife watched the whole thing from end to end – she had kept herself away from it and I wasn’t showing her bits and pieces as we went along. This was December 22nd,” said the Canadian director.
“She bawled for four hours,” he added. “She kept trying to get her s*** back together so she could tell me specific reactions, and then she’d just tear up and start crying again.
“Finally, I’m like, ‘Honey, I’ve got to go to bed. Sorry, we’ll talk about it some other time.’”
This response would have been a relief to Cameron, who has set almost impossible standards for the success of the forthcoming third film.
He had previously expressed concern shortly before The Way of Water was released over the 12-year gap between the first and second film. He needn’t have worried, however, as The Way of Water has since become the third highest-grossing film of all time, surpassing another of his films, Titanic.
Elsewhere, Cameron also told Empire that the new film will be slightly longer than its predecessor.
“In a nutshell, we had too many great ideas packed into act one of movie two,” he said. “The [film] was moving like a bullet train, and we weren’t drilling down enough on character. So I said, ‘Guys, we’ve got to split it.’”
“Movie 3 will actually be a little bit longer than movie 2.”
