There are very tentative release dates for the fourth and fifth films (December 2029 and 2031, respectively), but insiders told TheWrap that conversations are being had about how to make future \u201cAvatar\u201d movies cheaper and shorter, to make the investment less risky should they move forward, with some indications that Disney could be rethinking a planned \u201cAvatar\u201d expansion to one of its California theme parks.<\/p>\n
That these conversations are happening and Cameron, who initially plotted a vast, five-film saga, is questioning whether the franchise will continue after the latest release amassed $1.4 billion is surprising. After all, the first \u201cAvatar,\u201d released in 2009, is the highest-grossing film of all time, with more than $2.9 billion worldwide. The second film, 2022\u2019s \u201cAvatar: The Way of Water,\u201d is the third highest-grossing movie ever, with $2.3 billion (Cameron is responsible for three of the top five highest-grossing films of all time). And there\u2019s a lavish, highly interactive \u201cAvatar\u201d-themed land at Disney\u2019s Animal Kingdom, part of the sprawling Walt Disney World complex outside of Orlando. Countless people visit Pandora every day.<\/p>\n
But \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d is still registering, for some, as a disappointment. Its box office tally is massive in a vacuum, but looks less impressive when compared to \u201cZootopia 2,\u201d also released by parent company Disney last year, which made more than $1.8 billion. \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d also made a billion dollars less than \u201cAvatar: The Way of Water,\u201d released just three years earlier. All on a reported budget<\/a> of $350 million, with an additional $150 million marketing spend.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all about compare-and-contrast \u2013 \u2018Fire and Ash\u2019 made half of what the first movie made. And ticket prices in 2009 were not what they are in 2025. That\u2019s the level that James Cameron and the \u2018Avatar\u2019 films are operating in,\u201d said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore. \u201cWhen an $89 million domestic opening weekend and almost $1.5 billion worldwide would be seen \u2014 in any stretch \u2014 as a disappointment. That\u2019s why there\u2019s that perception. These are high-class problems to have.\u201d<\/p>\n Or, as a member of the \u201cAvatar\u201d team put it more succinctly in speaking with TheWrap, \u201cIt\u2019s bulls\u2013t that the movie made $1.5 billion and people are acting like it\u2019s \u2018Ishtar.\u2019 There\u2019s not a guarantee that they\u2019re all going to make $2 billion. The trilogy has made $6.7 billion, which averages more than $2 billion per film.\u201d<\/p>\n A Disney representative declined to comment. <\/p>\n Still, the question lingering in the backstage of science fiction awards shows and in the minds of executives at the Walt Disney Company in Burbank, is: How will the \u201cAvatar\u201d series move forward?<\/p>\n \u201cAvatar\u201d isn\u2019t the only major franchise getting a rethink inside Disney \u2014 Marvel is under the microscope after a trio of misfires in 2025, Star Wars has its cinematic hopes pinned to \u201cThe Mandalorian & Grogu,\u201d a departure from the Skywalker saga of films, and Pixar is leaning on sequels to ensure the animation studio\u2019s longevity. As contraction squeezes the entire industry, even $1.4 billion doesn\u2019t get you an automatic sequel greenlight.<\/p>\n It\u2019s enough to make you wonder if we\u2019ve spent our last Christmas on Pandora.<\/p>\n \t\t ***<\/p>\n It was Jon Landau, the former Fox executive who later ran Cameron\u2019s company Lightstorm and became his most trusted creative collaborator (he died in 2024 after a 16-month battle with esophageal cancer), who was often tasked with outlining the team\u2019s immense vision for the \u201cAvatar\u201d saga.<\/p>\n Landau would regale visitors to Lightstorm \u2013 promotional partners, marketing executives, those new to the \u201cAvatar\u201d fold \u2013 with what the movies were going to be and how they would push technology and the boundaries of storytelling even further in the years ahead. Before the second film released, the \u201cAvatar\u201d team was already plotting out four more installments, complete with a return to Earth and epic, \u201cStar Wars\u201d-style space battles. The world of \u201cAvatar\u201d was only going to get bigger \u2014 but also, Landau would argue, more emotionally intimate \u2014 with each passing film. This was ultimately a story about family writ large, across a fantastical canvas.<\/p>\n And after the success of \u201cAvatar: The Way of Water,\u201d those plans seemed locked in.<\/p>\n Cameron shot sequences for both the third and fourth films during production of \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d (one insider said around 22% of the fourth film has already been shot) and scripts for the fourth and fifth films are complete. Indeed, when embarking on the sequels, Cameron assembled a massive writers\u2019 room of A+ talent, made up of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno, who broke the stories for the sequels together. Jaffa and Silver were mostly centered on movies two and three, while Friedman and Salerno were responsible for the fourth and fifth movies.<\/p>\n And the expansion wouldn\u2019t just be at the movie theaters. To compliment the wildly popular land at Animal Kingdom in Florida, an \u201cAvatar\u201d-themed land at Disney California Adventure, across the esplanade from Disneyland, was announced with construction planned to begin in 2026.<\/p>\n \t\t But then those plans started to wobble, like an unsteady banshee in the skies above Pandora.<\/p>\n During the promotional campaign for the new movie, Cameron and members of the cast began openly talking about how \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d could be the conclusion of the franchise. A last-minute edit made the fate of one of the characters (Stephen Lang\u2019s villainous Quaritch) less nebulous<\/a>, leaving one less potential dangling plot thread should a fourth film never materialize. And the parcel of land earmarked for the \u201cAvatar\u201d-themed attraction at Disney California Adventure became a hotly disputed piece of real estate, with former Imagineer Jim Shull openly hypothesizing<\/a> that the land could instead be given over to a \u201cZootopia\u201d-themed attraction that opened in Shanghai in 2023.<\/p>\n \u201cDisney doesn\u2019t do anything without a reason. The reality is that \u2018Avatar 3\u2019 did OK but as a cultural force, it\u2019s exhausted. Nobody is demanding to see more. They like what they have and if they really like it, they can go to Florida and see it,\u201d Shull told TheWrap. \u201cCalifornia does not have a lot of land. If \u2018Avatar\u2019 had been a huge success and people were demanding \u20184\u2019 and \u20185\u2019 and beyond, that would change the equation. But there\u2019s not a lot of demand.\u201d<\/p>\n In Shull\u2019s opinion, a swap to expand the \u201cZootopia\u201d franchise in the California park makes sense.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Zootopia 2\u2019 exceeded expectations in terms of money and laid the groundwork for more \u2018Zootopia,\u2019\u201d Shull said. \u201cIf I were Josh D\u2019Amaro, in the seat, looking at the stock, I know that I could go to the board and say, \u2018I\u2019ve changed my mind for the stronger property,\u2019 and there would be no pushback.\u201d<\/p>\n Shull said that the lack of construction updates is telling. \u201cThe only time you do something like that is when you have second thoughts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \t\t According to one person familiar with the plans at Disneyland, the parks\u2019 operation teams are keener on the \u201cZootopia\u201d attraction because it uses a similar ride system to another Disneyland attraction (Mickey and Minnie\u2019s Runaway Railway) and could be more easily maintained. Another pointed to the fact that, since the \u201cAvatar\u201d attraction was a boat ride, it would also require its own water-treatment facility. Disney also, conspicuously, issued a press release<\/a> on the Disney+ viewing numbers for \u201cZootopia 2\u201d specifically calling out the fact that the \u201cZootopia\u201d attraction at Shanghai Disneyland is the highest-rated ride at the entire park, \u201cwith one in four guests stating they came to the park specifically for the land.\u201d<\/p>\n Construction on the DCA project \u2013 whatever it is \u2013 has already been pushed back a full year, which indicates something is going on with the space.<\/p>\n The battle for \u201cAvatar,\u201d it seems, has only just begun.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Where did the disconnect with the third movie come from?<\/p>\n \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash,\u201d was just as compelling as the two earlier movies and just as visually rich, particularly when viewed in Cameron\u2019s preferred 3D. Reviews were less enthusiastic (it\u2019s at 66% on Rotten Tomatoes vs. \u201cAvatar 2\u2019s\u201d 76%), but audience scores were solid. It once again won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.<\/p>\n In other words \u2013 on paper it would seem that \u201cAvatar 3\u201d should do as much boffo box office as the two earlier films, but, strangely, didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The \u201cAvatar\u201d team, according to a person with knowledge of its release, felt that the rollout of the film was too similar to what Disney had done for the launch of \u201cAvatar: The Way of Water,\u201d a film that had been released just three years earlier. The team worried that audiences would feel that they had already seen \u201cFire and Ash,\u201d even though it was a completely new movie.<\/p>\n But Disney would probably argue that the materials they received from the film were also very similar to \u201cThe Way of Water.\u201d After all, \u201cThe Way of Water\u201d and \u201cFire and Ash\u201d were, initially, a single mammoth movie (this is why Jaffa and Silver are credited as writers on both), with a narrative that grapples with comparable themes and is full of set pieces with parallel visuals. Both movies, for example, focus largely on the Na\u2019vi water clans, a group of bloodthirsty whalers and the Tulkun, a species of emotionally complex, whale-type creatures that populate Pandora\u2019s crystalline oceans.<\/p>\n It is a fact that, in an era when Universal can sell tickets for Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d a full year before the movie opens (and sell out those tickets), the promotional window for \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d felt considerably truncated. The first teaser trailer arrived online on July 28 and was attached to \u201cThe Fantastic Four: First Steps,\u201d another Disney movie, with the full trailer for the movie not debuting online until late September. By contrast, the first teaser for \u201cThe Way of Water\u201d arrived in early May, giving it several more months to build momentum.<\/p>\n \t\t You could feel, as \u201cFire and Ash\u201d approached, a decided absence of crucial pre-release buzz.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no anticipation,\u201d said one member of the \u201cAvatar\u201d team. \u201cThey literally used the same playbook [as for \u2018The Way of Water\u2019]. By not making it an event, it crippled the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n There was also the movie\u2019s massive 197-minute runtime, the longest in the franchise, which turns a quick jaunt to the movie theater into a James Cameron-worthy production, full of logistics and related hurdles. While an idea was floated to present the movie free of pre-movie trailers, Disney still sold 30 minutes of trailer real estate, ballooning the time needed to devote to \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash.\u201d It wasn\u2019t just a movie, it was an event, one that now had to be sandwiched into the busy holiday corridor. (Unlike the first two movies, the third \u201cAvatar\u201d opened a week closer to Christmas, ostensibly so that Disney could give \u201cZootopia 2\u201d more of a runway.)<\/p>\n Add to the mix the fact that many other mechanisms for awareness simply weren\u2019t there. There weren\u2019t \u201cAvatar\u201d characters on cans of Dr. Pepper or a line of T-shirts released at Uniqlo. (Do you think they even drink Dr. Pepper on Pandora?) And consumer products related to \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash,\u201d besides those released at the Florida theme park, were virtually nonexistent. This is a key \u201clever\u201d pulled by Disney on any of their flagship titles, but a quick search of \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d on DisneyStore.com pulls up four results<\/a> \u2013 three T-shirts and a sweatshirt. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n Incidentally, there are pages of \u201cZootopia\u201d stuff on the Disney Store website.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Based on conversations with people at Disney and those with knowledge of the \u201cAvatar\u201d team\u2019s thinking, all agree that a further \u201cAvatar\u201d movie needs to be shorter and cheaper. But the question remains \u2013 how?<\/p>\n When it comes to getting the movie\u2019s budget down, Cameron and his team have mentioned that they are determined to find a way to simplify the process, which is so complicated that we hesitate to even wade into the Pandorian waters to explain. It involves at least two full \u201cshoots\u201d \u2013 one where they are doing performance capture of the actors and another, mostly inside the computer, to figure out staging, camera movements and the intricacies of performance (along with the addition and staging of creatures and other elements). It\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n Costume designer Deborah Scott, who was nominated for an Oscar for her work on \u201cFire and Ash,\u201d designed each costume and its associated props, fabricated those in real life and then fed them to the animators and designers, refining each look along the way. This, in a microcosm, explains how cumbersome, time-intensive and expensive each element of the \u201cAvatar\u201d films are, taking years to complete and requiring the hard work of hundreds of specialized technicians and artists.<\/p>\n Some might point to using AI somewhere along the way, to make something easier. Cameron, despite authoring the first two \u201cTerminator\u201d movies, which explicitly warned of the threat of artificial intelligence, joined the board of StabilityAI in 2024<\/a>. But in the rollout of \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash,\u201d Cameron went to great lengths to assure viewers that no AI was utilized. Not only did he talk about it in interviews but a brief presentation ran before screenings of the movie, including the one I attended on the Walt Disney Studios lot in early December, emphasizing the role of human artists in the creation of \u201cAvatar.\u201d AI was not a part of the \u201cAvatar\u201d lexicon.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the question of what a cheaper, more streamlined \u201cAvatar\u201d would even look like.<\/p>\n \t\t The \u201cAvatar\u201d movies are, to many, the last bastion of the really-for-real theatrical experience. Sure, you can watch them at home months after the fact \u2014 but do you want to? These movies are staggering accomplishments, full of aural and visual details only properly digestible on the largest screen you can find. Consider that, after the first film was released, some viewers complained of Pandora withdrawal \u2014 the movie was so vivid, so dreamy, that they actually got depressed<\/a> when not watching.<\/p>\n There really is nothing like \u201cAvatar,\u201d anywhere, and it\u2019s that overstuffed-ness that makes it a draw.<\/p>\n \u201cI love these movies and I love the fact that it\u2019s James Cameron making these movies,\u201d New York Magazine critic Bilge Ebiri told TheWrap.\u201dIf James Cameron makes a fourth and fifth \u2018Avatar\u2019 and he makes them in his James Cameron way but he makes them for a budget, I\u2019d still trust him. He\u2019s not somebody who is going to phone it in or cut corners unnecessarily.\u201d<\/p>\n Cameron has brought up the possibility of simply handing the movies off to another, younger filmmaker. He\u2019s done it before. When it came time to make \u201cAlita: Battle Angel,\u201d based on the manga series by Yukito Kishiro and a project he had been flirting with even before he embarked on \u201cAvatar,\u201d he ended up handing the reins to Robert Rodriguez. Cameron still produced (with Landau) and co-wrote the script with Laeta Kalogridis, who worked on the first \u201cAvatar.\u201d But the experience showed that, with his time so committed to \u201cAvatar,\u201d he could delegate duties on a true passion project.<\/p>\n But, again, a Cameron-less \u201cAvatar\u201d feels wrong, somehow. These are movies that are built around the passion and obsessions of Cameron himself \u2013 ocean exploration, the importance of the environment, how cool big machines look when exploding midair. T uncouple the filmmaker and the films, like untethering an avatar from its human pilot mid-mission, could be catastrophic.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s his vision, it\u2019s his sensibility, that\u2019s what drives these films. I also think that they have a legacy to preserve,\u201d said Ebiri. \u201cIf they start giving us these janky fly-by-night sequels, it\u2019s going to make us feel less good about the \u2018Avatar\u2019 movies.\u201d <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Where does that leave things now?<\/p>\n On the theme park side of things, Shull floated the possibility that the \u201cAvatar\u201d attraction planned for Disney California Adventure could still be used elsewhere. There\u2019s an expansion pad, tentatively marked for a future attraction, show or additional retail or dining, tucked behind the current \u201cAvatar\u201d-themed land at Disney\u2019s Animal Kingdom. And it could be used in a future overseas park \u2013 Shanghai\u2019s second gate, dubbed Project Atlas, is in the planning stages and has seen an overhaul from an EPCOT-of-the-east-type science and technology park to something centered on Disney \u201cadventures,\u201d like \u201cAvatar.\u201d There is also talk that the third Tokyo gate, DisneySky, is back on the drawing board. And wouldn\u2019t the floating mountains of Pandora fit perfectly with that theme?<\/p>\n![\"avatar-fire-and-ash-sam-worthington\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/avatar-fire-and-ash-sam-worthington.jpg\"){kind=avatar}
\u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d (Disney\/20th Century)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/040826-Avatar-Franchise-Worldwide-Box-Office-1.jpg\"){kind=avatar}
Worldwide box office of the \u201cAvatar\u201d franchise<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/013026-The-Muppets.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"bob-iger\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/031726-Bob-Iger.gif\")
\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Disney](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/022426-Disney-Villainland-v4.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n![\"avatar-fire-and-ash\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/avatar-fire-and-ash.jpg\"){kind=avatar}
Oona Chaplin in \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d (20th Century Studios)<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Oona](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/CMS_AvatarFireAndAsh_Still15.jpg\"){kind=avatar}
\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Zootopia-2-4.jpg\")
\u201cZootopia 2\u201d (Disney)<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"avatar-fire-and-ash-oona-chaplin\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/avatar-fire-and-ash-oona-chaplin.jpg\"){kind=avatar}
\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Pandora-the-World-of-Avatar.jpg\"){kind=avatar}
Pandora \u2013 The World of Avatar attraction (Walt Disney World)<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/020326-Josh-DAmaro-Image.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Backstage at the Saturn Awards, held March 8 at the Hilton Universal City, James Cameron, who picked up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[10192,6460,96,7534,2839,56,54,55,26211],"class_list":{"0":"post-520140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-avatar","9":"tag-disney","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-james-cameron","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom","16":"tag-wrappro"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}