After directing the highest-grossing film trilogy of all time, and having spent more than two decades bending technology, studio executives and several hundred million dollars’ worth of underwater motion capture to his will, James Cameron this week signalled that he may be ready to hand the future of the Avatar franchise to another director. Indeed, he bent Hollywood to his will so completely that it became almost impossible in the early 2010s to watch a blockbuster without uncomfortable plastic glasses, and without objects on the screen being hurled pointlessly towards the audience. Still, the Canadian film-maker now appears to be seriously considering handing over everyone’s favourite multibillion-dollar bioluminescent space jungle to someone else.
“There’s been momentum in the Avatar universe for 21 years at this point because we started in 2005,” Cameron told Denise Donlon in an interview for Canada’s governor general’s performing arts awards. “It’s been kind of an unbroken continuum. So this is the point where I’m looking at the landscape and asking, ‘What are the other stories I want to tell? How many of them do I need to direct myself versus writing and/or producing with other film-makers?’”
