- The writers had “too many great ideas”
- Content cut from Avatar 2 became Avatar 3
- Third instalment will be longer than its predecessor
James Cameron’s third instalment in the Avatar series, Avatar: Fire and Ash is set to be released on 19 December, 2025. Speaking to Empire, the director has revealed that he and his writers were forced to split the second and third instalments, because they had too much good content to pack into one film.
Read more: Everything we know about Avatar: Fire and Ash
Fire and Ash was written by screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, best known for their work on the Planet of the Apes franchise. They were joined by Josh Friedman, who has been assigned to write Avatar 4, and Shane Salerno, who will be writing Avatar 5.
Read more: James Cameron shares very early reactions to Avatar 3
The team were seemingly on a roll in the writers room, as Cameron explained “In a nutshell, we had too many great ideas packed into act one of movie 2. The [film] was moving like a bullet train, and we were not drilling down enough on character. So I said, ‘Guys, we’ve got to split it.’”
New character development
Empire also shared new concept art featuring Lo’ak riding an ilu through blue water. In an interview with the publication, Silver – who, along with her husband Jaffa, forms a screenwriting duo – discussed the process of developing characters for the film.
“It was spectacular. You’re talking about a character deeply for days and days, and all of a sudden, there they are”, Silver said while reflecting on the newly released character art.
Cameron explained how the characters are written from real-life experiences. “These characters are amalgams of us, our childhoods, our role as parents, the mistakes we made and probably to some extent continue to make as parents,” the director said. “I mean, Jake is a hard-ass motherf*****. He’s very hard on his kids. Well, that’s me.”
Jaffa added to this, recalling how an old friend reached out to him after watching The Way of Water, having been reminded of a family dynamic. “A good friend of mine – a woman I grew up with – wrote to me after seeing the film and said that the relationship between Lo’ak and Neteyam reminded her of the one I had with my older brother.”
Avatar: Fire and Ash runtime
If you thought the sequel to Cameron’s first Avatar, The Way of Water ran long at three hours and twelve minutes, the director has got news for you. “Movie 3 will actually be a little bit longer than movie 2”, he revealed.
Silver also explained that “The characters needed to breathe. These movies are a lot more than just propulsive plot and gorgeous spectacle. I mean, these are real characters.”
Despite its three-hour-plus runtime, The Way of Water still managed an impressive $2.32 billion at the worldwide box office, making it the third highest-grossing film of all time. With Fire and Ash confirmed to have the longest runtime in the franchise yet, let’s hope those extra minutes in the spectacular world of Pandora are worth the numb legs.
