With “Avatar: Fire and Ash” crossing the $1 billion mark—and reportedly breaking even over the weekend—the possibility of “Avatar 4” being greenlit by Disney is inching closer by the day. The big question remains: will James Cameron return to direct, or will he step aside and hand the reins to a protege?
If Cameron does step away, a handful of directors have been floated as potential successors, all technically skilled enough to handle a VFX-heavy production of this scale. Robert Rodriguez is one possibility—not just because of his close friendship with Cameron, but also because of his experience on Cameron-produced “Alita: Battle Angel.”
Whether Disney would trust Rodriguez, a filmmaker with a mixed track record, to steer a billion-dollar franchise is still up in the air. If Cameron were to step aside, it’s easy to imagine he might also have his longtime friend Guillermo del Toro in mind as a potential successor.
Meanwhile, James Wan is now telling Screen Rant that he’d love to “take a crack” at directing the next Avatar.
Wan, who reshaped mainstream horror with “Saw,” “The Conjuring,” and “Insidious,” is now a free man following the tumultuous production of “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” which was plagued by reshoots, rewrites, on-set drama, and underwhelming test screenings. He also has a “Creature From the Black Lagoon” remake in development, though there’s no concrete word yet on whether that will be his next directorial project.
Sadly, for Wan, for all his horror chops, he isn’t exactly a natural fit for ‘Avatar 4.’ His strengths lie in jump scares, and haunted houses—not sprawling, billion-dollar sci-fi epics with mountains of CGI. The scale and technical demands of an Avatar movie are light-years beyond anything he’s tackled, and while his enthusiasm is nice, he’s not what this franchise needs.
As for the box office, ‘Fire and Ash’ reached $1 billion on its 18th day in theaters—a slightly slower pace than ‘The Way of Water,’ which hit the milestone in just 14 days. The original “Avatar” remains a juggernaut with $2.9 billion, while the sequel earned $2.3 billion. ‘Fire and Ash’ is projected to finish its run in the $1.6–$1.8 billion range, but even at that level, it’s difficult to imagine Disney shelving a franchise that continues to clear the $1 billion threshold so reliably.
Festival press conferences have turned into landmines of political questioning, to the point where some artists would probably prefer to turn down being a juror at Cannes, Venice, or Berlin.