James Cameron has suddenly changed his tune when it comes to “Ghosts of Hiroshima” being his potential next film. Turns out he only hyped it up because he was trying to sell copies of the book version?
“I have ten other projects; that one just sort of hit the headlines because of the book announcement and trying to push the book to a bestseller because the author is a friend of mine,” Cameron tells The Town’s Matt Belloni.
“Doesn’t mean I’m not going to make the film, but I haven’t written the script and it’s not slated right now, and I don’t even have a distribution partner on it. So it’s pretty much a vaporware project right now. I’ve got a couple of other projects that I’ve purchased or optioned or written.”
Didn’t Cameron recently say, around the time of the book’s launch, that ‘Hiroshima’ would be his “next non-Avatar movie”? Cameron had shared his intention to film ‘Hiroshima’ before beginning work on ‘Avatar 4,’ and he was going to do it in 3D to capture the bomb’s impact. I find it humorous and, quite on point, how he just lied about its immediacy to sell a few books.
Last year, Cameron had acquired the rights to Charles Pellegrino’s novel, who is apparently his “friend,” which coincided with the 80th anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing.
The story would partly center on the real-life account of a Japanese man who lived through the Hiroshima bombing, traveled to Nagasaki, and endured the second nuclear blast there. Pellegrino’s work incorporates firsthand testimonies from survivors along with insights from the emerging field of forensic archaeology.
In that same Belloni interview, Cameron says he’s working on “10 different projects,” one of which is probably “The Devils.” The others likely include “Avatar 4,” “Avatar 5,” ‘Alita 2,’ ‘Terminator 6,’ and that Billie Eilish 3D concert movie.
In the meantime, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is set for release in December, and Cameron says that it has to “make a lot of money” for the franchise to continue; otherwise he’ll probably revert to working on one of those ten projects as his next film.
Bassim Tariq was the first one in the chair. The "Mogul Mowgli" director spent two years building out the Mahershala Ali vehicle before exiting in 2022, and he's now letting the air out on this one.