Na het succesvolle Titanic uit 1997 duurde het ruim tien jaar voordat regisseur James Cameron weer een film afleverde. Dit was uiteraard de mega-kaskraker Avatar (2009). Het is ondertussen duidelijk dat Cameron komende jaren werkt aan twee Avatar sequels, die in 2015 en 2016 moeten verschijnen. Daarna hoef je geen nieuw filmproject van de veelbesproken regisseur te verwachten. In een interview met New York Times zegt hij alleen nog Avatar films te willen maken en als het aan de regisseur ligt, dan maakt hij zelfs Avatar 4.

Cameron zegt in het interview met de NY Times, tijdens de Beijing Film Festival: “I’ve divided my time over the last 16 years over deep ocean exploration and filmmaking. I’ve made two movies in 16 years, and I’ve done eight expeditions. Last year I basically completely disbanded my production company’s development arm. So I’m not interested in developing anything. I’m in the Avatar business. Period. That’s it. I’m making Avatar, Avatar 2, Avatar 3, maybe Avatar 4, and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts. And that all sounds I suppose a little bit restricted, but the point is I think within the Avatar landscape I can say everything I need to say that I think needs to be said, in terms of the state of the world and what I think we need to be doing about it. And doing it in an entertaining way. And anything I can’t say in that area, I want to say through documentaries, which I’m continuing.”

Dit zou kunnen betekenen dat hij zijn manga-project Battle Angel definitief in de ijskast stalt. In het interview zegt hij niets over dit project en spreekt hij liever over de productiefase van zijn Avatar sequels:

“We’ve spent the last year and a half on software development and pipeline development. The virtual production methodology was extremely prototypical on the first film. As then, no one had ever done it before and we didn’t even know for two and half years into it and $100 million into it if it was going to work. So we just wanted to make our lives a whole lot easier so that we can spend a little more of our brainpower on creativity. It was a very, very uphill battle on the first film. So we’ve been mostly working on the tool set, the production pipeline, setting up the new stages in Los Angeles, setting up the new visual effects pipeline in New Zealand, that sort of thing. And, by the way, writing. We haven’t gotten to the design stage yet. That’ll be the next.”

In het interview, dat je op de website van NY Times kunt lezen, verwijst hij ook naar (het werk van) andere regisseurs. Zo krijgt Zack Snyder vanwege zijn film 300 de complimenten van Cameron:

“There are filmmakers that come along that are quite iconoclastic. And that I’m in awe of, frankly. Zack Snyder’s 300. I think that was a really revolutionary film, because it was a completely deconstructive form of filmmaking in a way that nobody had done before, other than maybe Robert Rodriguez.”