While Releasing 'Avatar 3', James Cameron Questions the Future of Movies

'If I get to do another Avatar film, it'll be because the business model still works,' James Cameron tells CNN in a video interview — adding 'That I can't guarantee, as I sit here today. That'll play out over the next month, really.' He says theatre is a 'sacred space,' and while it will never go away, 'I think that it could fall below a threshhold where the kinds of movies that I like to make and that I like to see... won't be sustainable, they won't be economically viable. And that can happen. We're very close to that right now.'

The Wrap notes he filmed his new movie at the same time as its predecessor, The Way of Water.'

'We did all the performance capture in an 18-month period for both films. Then we did a lot of the virtual camera work to figure out exactly how we were going to do the live-action,' Cameron explained. 'Then we did all live-action together for both films. Then we split it and said, All right, now we just got to finish [movie] two.....' While Cameron has been iffy about whether the previously announced fourth and fifth films will actually happen, he has already shot some of the fourth movie. 'We're in a fluid scenario. Theatrical's contracting, streaming is expanding. People's habit patterns are changing. The teen demo consumes media differently than what we grew up with. And how much is it changing? Does theatrical contract to a point where it just stops right and doesn't get any smaller because we still value that, or does it continue to wither away?' Cameron said.

It's a theme he continued in his interview with The Hollywood Reporter'

'This can be the last one. There's only one [unanswered question] in the story. We may find that the release of Avatar 3 proves how diminished the cinematic experience is these days, or we may find it proves the case that it's as strong as it ever was — but only for certain types of films. It's a coin toss right now. We won't know until the middle of January.'

I ask something that might sound odd: What do you want to happen? But Cameron gets the implication. 'That's an interesting question,' he says. 'I feel I'm at a bit of a crossroads. Do I want it to be a wild success — which almost compels me to continue and make two more Avatar movies? Or do I want it to fail just enough that I can justify doing somethingelse...?'
'What won't happen is, I won't go down the rabbit hole of exclusively making only Avatar for multiple years. I'm going to figure out another way that involves more collaboration. I'm not saying I'm going to step away as a director, but I'm going to pull back from being as hands-on with every tiny aspect of the process...' Cameron won't reveal his next project — and he might even be unsure himself — but will give intriguing hints. In addition to co-directing Billie Eilish's upcoming 3D concert documentary, Hit Me Hard and Soft, Cameron has another globe-trotting documentary adventure in the works, the details of which are under wraps. His next narrative film probably won't be Ghosts of Hiroshima, which has generated considerable press after Cameron acquired the rights to Charles Pellegrino's book chronicling the true story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who in 1945 survived the nuclear blasts at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Cameron promised Yamaguchi on his deathbed in 2010 that he'd makethefilm. 'The postapocalypse is not going to be the fun that it is in science fiction,' he says. 'It's not going to have mutants and monsters and all sorts of cool stuff. It's hell....'

Cameron first portrayed the apocalypse in his 1984 debut, The Terminator, a franchise he's quietly working on revisiting. 'Once the dust clears on Avatar in a couple of months, I'm going to really plunge into that,' he says. 'There are a lot of narrative problems to solve. The biggest is how do I stay enough ahead of what's really happening to make it science fiction?' Asked whether he's cracked the premise, Cameron replies, 'I'm working on it,' but his sly smile suggests that he has.... There needs to be a broader interpretation of Terminator and the idea of a time war and super intelligence. I want to do new stuff that people aren't imagining.'


Maybe Cameron's best response was what he told USA Today:
'Let's do another interview in a year and then I'll tell you what my plans are,' Cameron, 71, says with a grin. For now, he's still catching his breath.

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