Avatar: Fire and Ash was changed after audiences saw The Way of Water, James Cameron reveals
After seeing how audiences reacted to Avatar: The Way of Water, James Cameron tinkered with the story of Avatar: Fire and Ash.
James Cameron changed Avatar: Fire and Ash after audiences saw The Way of Water.
The 71-year-old director revealed he “started to reevaluate” the third entry in his sci-fi series after seeing how viewers reacted to 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water, and so took into account what fans had and hadn’t liked about the second film when making Fire and Ash.
Speaking with io9, he said: “After Way of Water came out, I started to reevaluate and change things a little bit to answer kind of what the audience was responding to.
“Who are they interested in? What parts of it are they interested in? I even wrote some new scenes, and we went back, and we redid some stuff.
“It was very fluid, very creative, and the actors were always down. It didn’t matter. I’d call them up and say, ‘Hey, I got an idea for a scene.’
“They’d just come back, and they could drop back into character, and we could drop back into that world so easily, and everybody just loved it.
“They’d be off doing other films, and they’d come back and say, ‘We like this.’ It was always home base for them in a strange way.”
Avatar: Fire and Ash - which hits cinemas on December 19, 2025 - follows Na'vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and their family as they face a fierce new threat from the fire‑wielding ‘Ash People’ tribe led by Varang (Oona Chaplin), reigniting conflict on a turbulent Pandora.
As grief and old enemies resurface, alliances with the Metkayina clan will test their strength, faith, and survival.
The blockbuster also stars Sigourney Weaver as Kiri, Stephen Lang as Miles Quaritch and Kate Winslet as Ronal.
Cameron recently revealed that he initially received some pushback from 20th Century Studios when he suggested making sequels to the original 2009 Avatar - which became the highest-grossing movie of all time with a total taking of around $2.92 billion.
During an interview with Discussing Film, The Titanic director said: “We were working on three scripts and then it turned into four. Two got split into two and three.
“I actually got a fair bit of pushback from the studio. My counterargument was, ‘Wait a minute. What part of you getting another chance to make $2 billion is in question here?’”
Following Avatar: Fire and Ash, Cameron is planning to make a fourth and fifth entry in the franchise, so long as the latest instalment impresses at the box office.
Even so, The Aliens director insisted Fire and Ash was not so much a sequel, and more of a “culmination of a saga”.
He explained: “I don’t think of Fire and Ash as a sequel. I think it was a culmination of a saga.
“I like ‘saga’ better than ‘sequel’ because a lot of where we were going with the story was in the original architecture of the story. So if you think of this as the third act, I think that’s healthier.
“As opposed to a typical Hollywood sequel, where they make a bunch of money with a movie and then they’re like, ‘Oh, c***. We’ve got to scramble around and get a new script. Maybe it’s not so good, but let’s just shoot it and get it out there.’ That’s not what we’re doing here at all.
“It’s a long game. And I went into it knowing that we’d be playing a long game and betting that the audience would come along with us and care about these people.
“Because they may be 10 feet tall and blue, but they’re people.”
