LOS ANGELES — James Cameron is again leaving room for the possibility that he won’t direct Avatar 4, even as the franchise’s third film, “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” continues its holiday run after debuting Dec. 19. The filmmaker’s own hedging has reignited speculation about who could take the reins — with Chloé Zhao newly floated in commentary as a successor if Cameron ever steps aside, Dec. 29, 2025.
Asked about the long-range future, Cameron has tied everything to whether the numbers keep working at the scale the series demands. He told Entertainment Weekly, “I don’t know if the saga goes beyond this point. I hope it does,” adding that studios have to “prove that business case” each time. If the remaining chapters don’t get made, he promised, “I’ll hold a press conference and I’ll tell you what we were gonna do.”
What we know about Avatar 4 right now
Whatever happens behind the scenes, the calendar is set. Disney has dated Avatar 4 for Dec. 21, 2029, with “Avatar 5” scheduled for Dec. 19, 2031, according to a recent People overview of the franchise’s release plan. The same report notes that some of Avatar 4 has already been filmed — an early start meant to keep the story’s timeline believable as the younger cast ages.
Even with that head start, Cameron has made it clear he’s not treating the next installments as inevitable. In a recap of his latest remarks, Vulture described his fallback plan as a promise that fans will still learn where the saga was headed — whether through public plot reveals or another format — if the movies don’t move forward.
Why Chloé Zhao keeps coming up for Avatar 4
Zhao’s name isn’t attached to the series in any official capacity, and there is no announcement that she’s in talks. Still, the idea has traction because Zhao has toggled between intimate character work and studio-scale filmmaking — and that mix is exactly what a franchise handoff would demand as Avatar 4 shifts into a new phase.
In its speculative argument for a post-Cameron future, Polygon pointed to Zhao as the kind of filmmaker who could respect Cameron’s world-building while bringing a different emotional temperature to the storytelling. It was framed as a thought exercise, not a report of a deal.
How the Avatar 4 succession talk has been building
This isn’t the first time the director has floated a handoff. In a 2022 interview highlighted by People, Cameron called the films “all-consuming” and said he might eventually “pass the baton” to someone he trusts. Entertainment Weekly also reported that same year that Cameron was considering whether he’d direct the final entries himself.
For now, the official situation remains unchanged: Cameron is still the director of record, and Avatar 4 is still years away from release. But the longer the saga stretches out, the more his own public uncertainty invites the same question — if he doesn’t direct it, who will?
