Released in 2009, director James Cameron’s film Avatar became the first movie to officially gross more than $2 billion. Then it took him thirteen years to get a sequel into theatres, so it wasn’t clear if the follow-up was going to be able to replicate that success. But then, sure enough, Avatar: The Way of Water also grossed more than $2 billion, paving the way for not only Avatar 3, or Avatar: Fire and Ash, (which is scheduled to reach theatres on December 19, 2025) but also Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 – which will be released on December 21, 2029 and December 19, 2031, respectively. We’ll dig into the fourth and fifth movies eventually, but they’re still pretty far down the line. For now, we’ve put together a list of everything we know about Avatar: Fire and Ash. Here we go:
PRODUCTION
Cameron started talking up Avatar sequels years before the first movie was even released, with his original plan being to make a trilogy. But as he developed the sequels and worked with a writers room that consisted of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman, and Shane Salerno, the ideas got bigger and the number of sequels grew. The second and third films were originally supposed to reach theatres in December 2014 and 2015, but filming didn’t begin until September of 2017 – at which time Cameron started filming not just Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash, but also some scenes of Avatar 4. After three years of filming, with a slight disruption due to the COVID lockdowns, production on the second and third films wrapped in late December 2020. Since they were filmed simultaneously, the third film would have been released even if Avatar: The Way of Water had been a box office disappointment – but since it wasn’t, Cameron could finish the third film with a greater sense of confidence and Disney went ahead and gave an official greenlight to the fourth and fifth movies. Which should work out well for all of us, because Cameron has promised, “Five’s better than four, four’s better than three, and three’s better than two.“
What we know about the future sequels so far is that Avatar: Fire and Ash will introduce villainous Na’vi known as the Ash People, Avatar 4 will “go nuts in a good way“, and Avatar 5 will involve a journey to Earth.
As for why the film is titled Avatar: Fire and Ash, Cameron told Entertainment Weekly, “It took a long time to come up with a title that I felt resonated with what’s in the film. I don’t think I could say too much about it until you actually see the film and you see what it means, but if you think of fire as hatred, anger, violence, that sort of thing, and ash is the aftermath. So what’s the aftermath? Grief, loss, right? And then what does that cause in the future? More violence, more anger, more hatred. It’s a vicious cycle. So that’s the thinking. I think it goes to darker places than the previous ones did, but it’s still obviously this open, glorious, grand adventure, which is what we aspire to do every time we set out. But we’re not afraid to go into the dark places of our characters, which I think is also good. I think that’s also what people really feel they want when they get to know a character well, either through a series or whatever it is that they follow. They want to know more. They want to know more about them, find out what their limits are, so to speak. And we do that.“
SCRIPT & CAST
The cast of Fire and Ash includes Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, a former human who fell in love with the Na’vi Neytiri and has transferred his mind into his Na’vi avatar permanently; Zoe Saldaña as Jake’s wife Neytiri; Sigourney Weaver as Kiri, a Na’vi who was adopted by Jake and Neytiri; Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch, formerly a human military commander who was killed and resurrected as an avatar recombinant; Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge, former head administrator for the RDA mining operation; Kate Winslet as the pregnant Na’vi free diver Ronal; Cliff Curtis as Tonowari, chieftain of the Na’vi clan Metkayina; Joel David Moore as former scientist Dr. Norm Spellman; CCH Pounder as Neytiri’s mother Mo’at; Edie Falco as General Frances Ardmore, Quaritch’s successor as commander of the RDA military operations; Brendan Cowell as Captain Mick Scoresby, the former commander of a private sector marine hunting vessel; Jemaine Clement as marine biologist Dr. Ian Garvin; Britain Dalton as Lo’ak, Jake and Neytiri’s son; Trinity Jo-Li Bliss as Tuktirey (“Tuk”), Jake and Neytiri’s daughter; Jack Champion as Miles “Spider” Socorro, the teenaged son of Quaritch who is being raised by Jake and Neytiri; Bailey Bass as Ronal’s daughter and Lo’ak’s love interest Tsireya (“Reya”); Filip Geljo as Ronal’s son Ao’nung; Duane Evans, Jr. as free diver Rotxo; Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel, a scientist who worked in the avatar program; Matt Gerald as Corporal Lyle Wainfleet, a mercenary who died and was resurrected as an avatar recombinant; David Thewlis as a Na’vi named Peylak; and Oona Chaplin as Varang, the leader of the “aggressive, volcanic race” known as the Ash People. Producer Jon Landau said, “There are good humans and there are bad humans. It’s the same thing on the Na’vi side. Oftentimes, people don’t see themselves as bad. What is the root cause of how they evolve into what we perceive as bad? Maybe there are other factors there that we aren’t aware of.“ Plus, the space-whale / Tulkun called Payakan will be back.
As mentioned, the next Avatar will introduce an internal conflict with the non-peaceful tribe of Na’vi known as the Ash People. Cameron explained to Variety, “I want to show the Na’vi from another angle because, so far, I have only shown their good sides. In the early films, there are very negative human examples and very positive Na’vi examples. In Avatar 3, we will do the opposite. We will also explore new worlds, while continuing the story of the main characters. I can say that the last parts will be the best. The others were an introduction, a way to set the table before serving the meal.”
When Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver were tasked with writing the script for Avatar: The Way of Water, they wound up with far too much story – so much, they had to split the script into two movies, resulting in Avatar: Fire and Ash. Silver told Variety, “From the beginning, one of the challenges — I’ll say it was a delicious challenge — is that there was too much material.” At first they considered cutting down the script, but James Cameron didn’t think that was a good idea. “Carrying this burden was always an issue in terms of getting the first act of that first movie moving, and there was just an enormous amount of material in there. So somewhere after we had started writing, [Cameron] called us up and he said, ‘Look, we’ve got too much material. We’re going to split it into two movies.’”
Silver told Empire, “The characters needed to breathe. These movies are a lot more than just propulsive plot and gorgeous spectacle. I mean, these are real characters.” In fact, some of these characters are based on the writers themselves. Like Cameron said, “These characters are amalgams of us, our childhoods, our role as parents, the mistakes we made, and probably to some extent continue to make as parents. I mean, Jake is a hard-ass motherf*cker. He’s very hard on his kids. Well, that’s me.” Meanwhile, the relationship between the characters Lo’ak and Neteyam in The Way of Water was inspired by the relationship Rick Jaffa has with his older brother.
The younger characters are a big reason why Cameron wanted to shoot the sequels at the same time. He told Entertainment Weekly that if the sequels hadn’t been filmed concurrently, “you get – and I love Stranger Things – but you get the Stranger Things effect where they’re supposed to still be in high school [but] they look like they’re 27. You know, I love the show. It’s okay, we’ll suspend disbelief. We like the characters, but, you know.“ For example, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss was around the age of 7 when she was first cast to play the character Tuk in the sequels, and was 13 by the time The Way of Water was released. Jack Champion, who was cast to play Spider when he was 12, was 18 when the film was released.
While the character Jake Sully has been the narrator of both the first Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water, he is losing his narration job as of the new film. During an interview on Soundtracking With Edith Bowman, Cameron gave away the fact that the narrator of the next sequel is the son of Jake Sully and Neytiri, Lo’ak. He said, “Lo’ak really emerged as a character that people went with. … Jake was our voiceover narrator for movie one and for movie two, and we have a different narrator for each of the subsequent films. We see it through the eyes of a different character. Movie three is through Lo’ak’s eyes.“
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Champion said, “I was very shocked by (the script for Avatar 3). It just takes a hard left turn, and that’s not a bad thing. You think you know where it’s going, but then a wrecking ball comes. So you’re completely like, ‘Oh wow, I never thought that would’ve happened.’ You also see more regions of Pandora, and you get introduced to more cultures. So I think it’s even better than Avatar: The Way of Water. Collectively, they’ll each get better.“ Saldaña teased what’s to come during a conversation with Deadline, “The way that we left the Sully family, they’re mourning heavily the loss of their child. So I do believe that that will carry out a great deal in the third installment of Avatar. Jake and Neytiri are on this journey of acceptance, of accepting who they are and what they must be for each other and how they’re going to push forward to keep their family safe. And I love the fact that in the core of this entire saga is a beautiful love story, and I love that Jim really wrote that for them. But it’s not going to be easy. They’re not always going to meet eye to eye, and I just hope that they keep each other safe. That’s my hope for them.“
Speaking with Empire, James Cameron said that the third Avatar movie will have “some really clever action set-pieces. You can get your blood up in this movie. But what excites me as an artist who recently turned 70 and has kind of done all that stuff is not only the opportunity to get to do it again, but to get to a level of character and intrigue you haven’t seen before in an Avatar movie. We’re just starting to riff on it and twist it and turn it. It’s a tricky thing. We could be getting high on our own supply here, and everybody who looks at it goes, ‘F*ck, that’s not what I signed up for.’ But if you’re not making brave choices, you’re wasting everybody’s time and money. That alone is not sufficient to create success, but it’s necessary. You’ve got to break the mould every fricking time.” Cameron also confirmed that the film deals heavily with grief. He said, (with thanks to Screen Rant for sharing the quote from Empire magazine), “The exact quote, which is in the voiceover, is, ‘The fire of hate gives way to the ash of grief.’ I think what commercial Hollywood doesn’t do well is deal with grief the way human beings really deal with it. You know, characters get killed off, and then in the next movie everybody’s happy again. I’ve lost a lot of people, friends and family members, over the last six or eight years, and it doesn’t work that way. It also doesn’t make you so mad that you’re going to become an army of one and gun up and kill all those motherfu**ers, which is another Hollywood trope. It makes you just kind of depressed and fu**ed up. I’m not saying our movie’s depressed and fu**ed up, I’m just saying that I think we deal with that part of life quite honestly. The [Sullys] journey continues in a very naturalistic, novelistic way. I’ve sort of thought of this next cycle, meaning 3, 4 and 5, as how they continue to process the things that happen to them. Now, of course, they’re not human, but this is a movie for us, by us, right? Science-fiction is always just a big mirror of the human condition.“
RUNNING TIME
A couple of years ago, it was rumored that Cameron had a nine-hour cut of Avatar: Fire and Ash, which he would then whittle down to feature length for the theatrical release. The nine-hour version would then drop on the Disney+ streaming service as a limited series at a later date. We haven’t heard anything more about that possibility, but Cameron has confirmed that Avatar: Fire and Ash will be even longer than its predecessors.
The first Avatar was quite long, with a running time of 2 hours and 42 minutes, but Avatar: The Way of Water surpassed it, going on for 3 hours and 12 minutes. Speaking with Empire, Cameron said, “In a nutshell, we had too many great ideas packed into act one of movie 2. 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.’” As a result, “Movie 3 will actually be a little bit longer than movie 2.“
Whatever the running time may be, we do know that Cameron screened an unfinished version of Avatar: Fire and Ash for his wife, Suzy Amis Cameron, and it left her crying for four hours. He said, “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. She bawled for four hours. She kept trying to get her shit 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.’ She called the ball on Titanic and Avatar and Avatar 2. So I trust her heart on it.”
At the D23 Expo in Brazil in 2024, Disney unveiled a batch of Avatar: Fire and Ash concept art:
More pieces of concept art were shared by Empire:
First, we have a look at the Ash Clan. Cameron told Empire, “Varang (played by Oona Chaplin) is the leader of a people who have gone through an incredible hardship. She’s hardened by that. She will do anything for them, even things that we would consider to be evil. One thing we wanted to do in this film is not be black-and-white simplistic. We’re trying to evolve beyond the ‘all humans are bad, all Na’vi are good’ paradigm.” Cameron also praised Chaplin’s performance, saying she made her adversarial character “feel so real and alive.“
Then there’s the Wind Traders, who use giant creatures to fly. Cameron said, “They’re nomadic traders, equivalent to the camel caravans of the Spice Road back in the Middle Ages. And you know, they’re just fun. Like all Na’vi, they live in a symbiosis with their creatures. If you’ve got any nautical blood in your veins, you’ll want to be on [their] ship.“
In early 2025, Cameron sent a video to the Las Vegas-based event CinemaCon to introduce Zoe Saldaña and a few clips from Avatar: Fire and Ash. “So sorry I can’t be there, but I’m in New Zealand, finishing up Avatar: Fire and Ash, which I think we can all agree is a good use of my time, considering this sucker is coming at us like a freight train on December 19,” Cameron said. “But I’m sending you guys a reel to give you a taste of the spectacle and new creatures and new cultures that our amazing artists have created, and a glimpse of the increased emotional heart of soul that our incredible cast has delivered.” He went on to tease that the “Sully family are really put through the ringer on this one as they face not only the human invaders, but new adversaries: the Ash People.” Cameron explained that the Ash People are Na’vi who have forsaken Eywa. JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray said the sizzle reel, which was in 3D, was really incredible and even more mind-blowing than the second film. In addition to the Ash People, it also introduces the Wind Traders, new allies for the Sully family who take to the skies in balloon-type vessels. The footage finds the Sully family still living with the water tribe but takes a dark turn when Neytiri is attacked by a grey-skinned Na’vi with red face paint, wielding fire. Another Na’vi falls from the sky after being hit by a flaming arrow.
When an image of an angry Neytiri was released, Saldaña explained that the character is dealing with absolute devastation due to the loss of her son Neteyam in the second film. “That pain is seamlessly followed up on. And because it doesn’t really have anywhere to go, and doesn’t go away, rage can also come from it. [The Sullys] are going to be tested as a family. Not only would everything that’s happening compel her to question the bond she has with her husband, but also her bond with herself, her people, her land, and the way the Na’vi are. She’s going to question everything.“
Then we got an image of the villainous Quaritch and his estranged son Spider, who reconnect in the new film. Lang told Empire, “They reconnect out of necessity. Their connection is not a solo connection. There are times when everybody comes together on some level. But, when enemies cooperate, you can be sure betrayal is just around the corner. … Spider confuses Quaritch. But Quaritch wants clarity. There is something about Spider that Quaritch really loves — not a word we associate with him. I think respect and admiration really develop in spades, as well as animosity and manipulation. The relationship will deepen — for better or worse.” Champion told Empire, “(Spider) feels very conflicted. His ‘dad’ is reborn into this Na’vi form and still as evil as ever, if not more so, and he still felt he had to save him. You see that guilt play out, and the evolution of Spider trying to figure out where he belongs.“
And that’s everything we know about Avatar: Fire and Ash… for now. There’s sure to be a lot more information revealed as we get closer to the film’s December release date – and there’s still a long way to go for the Avatar franchise as well. Not only are we getting two more sequels after this one, but Cameron has said that he also has ideas for a potential Avatar 6 and 7, which will only be made if there’s still a continuing demand for the franchise. “They’ll be just far enough apart that they remain events, hopefully, in the lives of fans, of people who want to follow us, but not so far apart that it’s like there’s a generational difference between one movie. We’re fortunate we survived that, right? We got over that hurdle. So now we believe it’s going to come at the right pacing.“
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