{"id":431575,"date":"2026-05-17T05:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T05:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/431575\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T05:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T05:06:10","slug":"james-cameron-will-take-a-year-to-figure-out-how-to-make-avatar-4-and-5-quicker-and-cheaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/431575\/","title":{"rendered":"James Cameron Will Take a Year to Figure Out How to Make Avatar 4 and 5 Quicker and Cheaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Titanic and Terminator director James Cameron said he’s “looking at some new technologies” to try and get Avatar 4<\/a> and 5<\/a> made “in half the time for two-thirds of the cost,” but it’s going to take a year just to figure it out.<\/p>\n

The legendary filmmaker spoke about how he plans to continue his long-in-the-works sci-fi saga during an interview with The Empire Film Podcast<\/a>. When asked what’s next for Cameron following the premiere of Avatar: Fire and Ash<\/a> and his Billie Eilish concert movie, he told The Empire Film Podcast he’s hoping to alter his process to, hopefully “more efficiently,” dive back into Pandora.<\/p>\n

“You know, I’ll be doing some writing. I’ve got a number of projects that I’m cooking,” he said. “And Avatar 4 and 5 are still floating out there. We\u2019re going to be looking at some new technologies to try to do them more efficiently. Because they’re hideously expensive and take a long time. I want to do them in half the time for two-thirds of the cost. That\u2019s my metric.”<\/p>\n

Cameron added that it’s going to “take us a year or so” to even come up with a plan on how to more efficiently create Avatar movies going forward. In the meantime, he promised that he’ll be “writing and doing a couple of other things.”<\/p>\n

Avatar first took audiences to Pandora with the launch of the original film<\/a> in 2009, but its sequel, The Way of Water<\/a>, wouldn’t arrive until an incredible 13 years later in 2022. The three-year wait between Avatar 2 and its Fire and Ash follow-up was comparatively far less painful, but even that timeframe feels a bit on the long side for the 71-year-old director.<\/p>\n

While it’s true that all three Avatar movies have managed to cross the $1 billion mark at the box office<\/a>, Fire and Ash only made $1.48 billion compared to The Way of Water’s $2.4 billion, suggesting potentially declining interest amongst moviegoers. Adding to the sting is the last film’s reported $400 million budget<\/a>, which doesn’t account for the hundreds of millions Disney would have spent on its marketing campaign.<\/p>\n

Avatar: Fire & Ash Concept Art\"Image<\/p>\n

Despite Cameron’s hope to eventually bring the Sully family back to theaters, how exactly Avatar 4 and 5 will take shape is unclear<\/a>, for now. We have yet to see what “new technologies”<\/a> the Avatar director and writer plans to explore, but he’s made it clear that he’s hoping to produce the films for cheaper in the past<\/a>. A report from last month suggested as much<\/a>, too, though it appeared much was still moving behind the scenes at Disney.<\/p>\n

Disney has currently scheduled tentative release dates of December 21, 2029, for Avatar 4 and December 19, 2031, for Avatar 5. A recent update from producer Rae Sanchini<\/a> promised that scripts are in hand as the team continues to move “full speed ahead.”<\/p>\n

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Titanic and Terminator director James Cameron said he’s “looking at some new technologies” to try and get Avatar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-431575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}