James Cameron Reveals a Secret “Terminator” Project & “Avatar” Sequel Updates
James Cameron is famously a very busy, very driven man. He’s currently working on Avatar 3, recently revealed as Avatar: Fire and Ash at Disney’s D23 Expo. The film is due in theaters on December 19, 2025, and will feature a more militant and hostile race of the Na’vi called the Ash People. This blockbuster will be followed by Avatar 4 and 5, which are currently set to be released in 2029 and 2031.
In a freewheeling must-read interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cameron touched upon a few of his upcoming projects, some well known, like the Avatar sequels, and one that appears to be something he’s working on in secret—a new Terminator.
For Avatar 4 and 5, the previous scuttlebutt was that Cameron would be passing the directorial duties off to someone else, but when THR asked him if he was planning on directing those films, Cameron said this:
“Absolutely. I mean, they’re going to have to stop me. I got plenty of energy, love doing what I’m doing. Why would I not? And they’re written, by the way. I just reread both of them about a month ago. They’re cracking stories. They’ve got to get made. Look, if I get hit by a bus and I’m in an iron lung, somebody else is going to do it.”
THR also asked Cameron about his involvement in Fede Alvarez’s upcoming Alien: Romulus, an interquel set between Ridley Scott’s 1979 original Alien and Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens.
“I saw a rough cut six months ago, so I’m sure it’s changed a lot. And I viewed it once. I gave some notes to [director Fede Álvarez]. He and I aren’t close pals. I mean, I wish him the best with it, but I think it’s been overstated that I had some big creative input to that film. I think Ridley [Scott] did because Ridley was an actual producer on the film. So I’m just putting it in perspective.”
Speaking about another franchise near and dear to Cameron’s heart, THR asked him about his thoughts on Netflix’s upcoming animated series Terminator Zero. He had this to say:
“It looks interesting. My relationship to that is very much like The Sarah Connor Chronicles — other people spinning stories in a world I set in motion is interesting to me. What’s their takeaway? What intrigued them about it? Where are they going with it? It looks like they’re going back to the root cause of Judgment Day — the nuclear war — and whether that’s an ultimate timeline. I’d be curious to see what they’ve come up with. I’m working on my own Terminator stuff right now. It’s got nothing to do with that. Like with The Sarah Connor Chronicles, they occasionally touched on things I had been playing with completely independently. So there’s some curiosity there. It’s not a burning curiosity, but, obviously, it’d be nice to see it succeed.”
When THR was admittedly surprised by this news and wanted to know more, Cameron deployed his underappreciated humor:
“It’s totally classified. I don’t want to have to send out a potentially dangerous robotic agent if you were to talk about it, even retroactively.”
Featured image: Director James Cameron behind the scenes of 20th Century Studios’ AVATAR 2. Photo by Mark Fellman. © 2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
