New Zealand has become a key location for the film industry ever since Peter Jackson brought it to the world in The Lord of the Rings films. I'd guess that the second biggest franchise to call the nation home has to be Avatar. Director James Cameron also calls the country his home, having lived there since 2020. While Avatar certainly plays its part in that choice, it seems likely the director would live in New Zealand even if the movies never happened.
In a clip from an upcoming episode of the In Depth with Graham Bensinger podcast, James Cameron reveals that his love affair with New Zealand actually started 15 years before the first Avatar film. He made an unscheduled stop there back in 1994, and before he left, he decided he would move there, eventually. Cameron explains…
I went to New Zealand for the first time in ‘94. I was on my way to the South Pole, and we wound up getting stuck there because the flights were grounded because of ice conditions. And I wound up exploring around the Christchurch area and just really falling in love with the country, the scenery, the people, the way of life there. I made myself a promise, I said, ‘I’m going to come live here someday.’
The first Avatar movie played its part in moving James Cameron closer to that goal. It was two years after the first film that he and his wife, Suzy Amis, bought their farm in New Zealand. They would then begin to split their time between New Zealand and California for the next decade.
Ultimately, it would be the COVID pandemic that would push Cameron to finally pull the trigger on moving full-time to New Zealand. The next two Avatar movies, which would become The Way of Water and Fire and Ash, were in production when the pandemic hit and shut down New Zealand to outsiders, making it difficult for Cameron and his family to get back to their farm, nevermind get production started again. Once the filmmaker was able to get back, the decision was made to stay. Cameron continued…
I had to move mountains to get our production unit back up and running in New Zealand, and we just decided at that point in time that it was time to make the move as a family.
Having been to New Zealand once myself, I certainly can’t argue that it’s a beautiful country, and I totally understand why somebody would want to live there. Whether Cameron will continue to work in New Zealand, however, is a different question. While Avatar 4 and 5 are still listed as upcoming Disney movies, and the scripts are done, there’s no official news on production, and Cameron himself seemed to be managing expectations that the two movies are not guaranteed.
