James Cameron’s next movie after his Avatar sequels might surprise you

For the first time this century, James Cameron will leave Pandora to helm another feature film. Per Deadline, Cameron has purchased the rights to Charles Pellegrino‘s forthcoming book Ghosts of Hiroshima. Cameron plans to combine Ghosts of Hiroshima with Pellegrino’s 2015 book Last Train From Hiroshima to make one “uncompromising theatrical film.”

Cameron’s Last Train From Hiroshima will be shot when “Avatar production permits.” Set during World War II, the true story revolves around the two nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After surviving the Hiroshima blast, a Japanese man boards a train to Nagasaki, where he survives his second atomic blast. Pellegrino’s books use eyewitness accounts from the Japanese survivors and the American pilots to drive the narrative.

“It’s a subject that I’ve wanted to do a film about, that I’ve been wrestling with how to do it, over the years,” Cameron told Deadline. “I met Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just days before he died. He was in the hospital. He was handing the baton of his personal story to us, so I have to do it. I can’t turn away from it.”

Pellegrino’s Ghosts of Hiroshima will be published in August 2025, the 80th anniversary of the atomic bomb drop.

Cameron has committed to use Ghosts Of Hiroshima, and the 2015 Pellegrino book Last Train From Hiroshima, as the basis for a film called Last Train From Hiroshima https://t.co/cHIdrjLP9P

— Deadline (@DEADLINE) September 16, 2024

Last Train From Hiroshima is Cameron’s first non-Avatar feature film since 1997’s Titanic, which won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Cameron’s last film, Avatar: The Way of Water, grossed $2.32 billion and received four Academy Award nominations.

The third Avatar film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, arrives in theaters on December 19, 2025. Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 are in production.