In an interview with Variety, James Cameron basically confirms that “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is around three hours long. Speaking about rewriting and reshooting a few scenes involving Jake and the Toruk, he says: “And we’re at three hours, big surprise! But it works beautifully…”
Of course, Cameron is known for continuing to tweak his films deep into post-production, so the exact final runtime isn’t locked in stone yet, but from his own words, it sounds like the working version of ‘Fire and Ash’ is indeed about three hours long.
It should be noted that Cameron didn’t clarify in that interview whether his “three hours” included the end credits. Typically, when filmmakers casually mention runtimes during production or editing, they’re usually talking about the feature itself, without end credits, because credits are added later in the process and often run 10–12 minutes for a movie on the scale of “Avatar.”
So, we’re basically looking at the same runtime as “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which was 3 hours 12 minutes. The first “Avatar” clocked in at 162 minutes. The ambition of these last two sequels has clearly kicked up a notch. Hopefully, it doesn’t actually feel as laborious as the runtime indicates. I’m again reminded of an old Roger Ebert quote: “No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.”
Cameron additionally tells Variety that while he plans to direct his WWII epic “Ghosts of Hiroshima,” he hasn’t written a script yet and doesn’t know when it will happen. Right now, his future depends heavily on the performance of “Fire and Ash” — if it’s a big success, he may move straight into “Avatar 4” and “Avatar 5,” but rising VFX costs and questions about profitability could also push him toward taking a break, tackling smaller projects, or slotting in “Ghosts of Hiroshima” before continuing the saga. He admits he’s at a “crossroads,” but the only certainty is that he’ll keep directing.
This third ‘Avatar’ comes with hefty expectations. ‘The Way of Water,’ released in late 2022, cost $400M to produce and turned out to be the year’s most profitable movie, grossing $2.3 billion worldwide. In addition, it placed James Cameron as the only filmmaker in history to have three movies among the top 20 highest-grossing of all time. Will this be his fourth?
“Avatar: Fire and Ash” is set for theatrical release on December 19, 2025.
While James L. Brooks teased last year that "we'll soon be seeing" Jack Nicholson, 89, act again, and that he was "reading scripts," that idea has now been shut down by his close friend Michael Douglas, 82.