James Cameron Is Already Thinking About What to Do After Avatar. He Just Bought the Rights to a Book to Adapt It

While the development plans for the Avatar franchise seem to be ongoing and endless, its director, James Cameron, is already thinking about what to do after he finishes with the adventures of the Na’vi on Pandora. According to Deadline, he’s planning to direct a movie about the atomic bomb. For this project, he’s recently acquired the rights to a yet-to-be-published novel called Ghosts of Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino.

The book, which will be released in August 2025, will be a sequel to Pellegrino’s 2015 book, Last Train from Hiroshima. Cameron intends to combine the two books into a single story for his film. It’s worth noting that Pellegrino has previously worked with Cameron as a scientific advisor on the Avatar films and Titanic and has also authored books about the sinking of the Titanic, such as Ghosts of the Titanic.

In the movie, Cameron will follow the true story of 29-year-old engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who’s known for being the only person to survive the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. He was in Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6 when the U.S. military bombed the city. The next day, he returned by train to Nagasaki, where he also survived the bombing on Aug. 9.

Between 110,000 and 210,000 people died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but he managed to escape.

“It’s a subject that I’ve wanted to do a film about, that I’ve been wrestling with how to do it, over the years. I met Tsutomu Yamaguchi... He was in the hospital. He was handing the baton of his personal story to us, so I have to do it. I can’t turn away from it,” Cameron told Deadline.

This unique story will be his first project outside the Avatar saga since 1997 when he released Titanic.

Image | Gage Skidmore

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