What happens if Avatar: Fire and Ash doesn’t make enough profit to convince Disney to bankroll Avatar 4 and 5? Creator James Cameron has said he’s ready to walk away from the franchise, adding he’ll write a book to resolve the one thread Avatar 3 leaves open.

The special effects-heavy Avatar films cost a huge amount of money to produce, but they have historically made billions of dollars at the box office. Avatar: Fire and Ash, due out in December, is expected to follow suit — and the pressure is on it to deliver for Disney so director James Cameron can realize his vision and release Avatar 4 and 5 over the next six years.

Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Cameron admitted he was feeling nervous about Avatar: Fire and Ash’s box office performance, and was mindful of the “forces” working against theatrical releases in 2025.

There’s the potential for “sequelitis,” Cameron noted. "People tend to dismiss sequels unless it’s the third Lord of the Rings film and you want to see what happens to everybody, which in my mind this is — this is the culmination of a story arc, but that may not be how the public sees it.”

And there’s the “one-two punch” of streaming and Covid, which means fewer people are going to the movies — 75% of what it was in 2019, Cameron suggested.

When pressed on how much Avatar: Fire and Ash cost to make, Cameron wouldn’t be drawn into divulging a figure, but did dance around the issue by suggesting it was a lot of money, and so the movie will have to make a lot of money.

“It is one metric f**k ton of money, which means we have to make two metric f**k tons of money to make a profit,” he said. “I have no doubt in my mind that this movie will make money. The question is, does it make enough money to justify doing it again?”

And on that point, Cameron admitted he was “absolutely” ready to walk away from Avatar if Fire and Ash flops.

“I’ve been in Avatar land for 20 years,” he said. “Actually 30 years because I wrote it in ‘95, but I wasn’t working continuously on it for those first 10 years. Yeah, absolutely, sure. If this is where it ends, cool.”

But what about open story threads?

“There’s one open thread. I’ll write a book!” Cameron responded.

What Cameron won’t do is hand Avatar over to someone else (“absolutely not!”). “I have choices there,” he explained. “There are levels in which I immerse. I could produce it. I don’t think there’d ever be a version where there’s another Avatar movie that I didn’t produce closely. But in terms of taking over my life, that’s a threshold issue for me.”

Avatar 4 is down for release on December 21, 2029, with Avatar 5 due out December 19, 2031. Cameron, now 71, would be close to 80 years old by the time it all wraps up.

Avatar remains the highest-grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation), and has earned a staggering $2.9 billion across several theatrical runs. (Avengers: Endgame overtook Avatar for a brief period, before Avatar then stole its crown back via a fresh re-release.) 2022 sequel Avatar: The Way of Water earned $2.3 billion, meanwhile, cementing it as the third-highest grossing film of all time — just ahead of Cameron's own Titanic, which floats on $2.2 billion.

Can Avatar: Fire and Ash come close to its predecessors? The only movie to crack the $2 billion mark at the box office since Avatar 2 came out was Ne Zha 2. It feels like the world is in a very different place even now, just a few years after The Way of Water.

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Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].