James Cameron on two decades of making ‘Avatar’ and the future he sees for movies.


NEW YORK — James Cameron recently turned 71 as he brought his third “Avatar” film, “Fire and Ash,” to the finish line.

Cameron first began developing “Avatar” more than 30 years ago. He started working on the first film in earnest 20 years ago. Production on “Fire and Ash,” which ran concurrently with 2022’s “The Way of Water,” got underway eight years ago.

By any measure, “Avatar” is one of the largest undertakings ever by a filmmaker. It’s maybe the only project that could make “Titanic” look like a modest one-off. Cameron has dedicated a huge chunk of his life to it. Now, as he prepares to unveil the latest chapter of his Na’vi opus on Dec. 19, Cameron is approaching what he calls a crossroads.

“As you get older you start to think of time in a slightly different way,” Cameron says from his 5,000-acre organic farm in New Zealand. “It’s not an infinite resource.”

Two more “Avatar” films are already written and have release dates, in 2029 and 2031. Right now, though, Cameron is focused on completing “Fire and Ash,” which is almost guaranteed to be the biggest movie of the fall. To get “Avatar” — a franchise already worth US$5.2 billion in worldwide tickets sales — back in the minds of moviegoers, “The Way of Water” will also be rereleased Oct. 3.

“As I told the brass at Disney, we’re right at the glide slope to land right on time for delivery,” Cameron says. “The first film was a nightmare. Movie two was hectic. But here, I keep having to pinch myself because it’s all going well. The film is strong.”

There may be no filmmaker more at the nexus of past and future blockbuster making than Cameron. “Avatar: Fire and Ash” will arrive as Hollywood is reconciling itself to a new theatrical normal. In a movie industry of shrinking ambition, “Avatar,” an original spectacle that once was the wave of the future, is already beginning to look like an endangered species.

In a recent interview, Cameron reflected on his history with “Avatar” and what’s next for him, including a planned adaptation of Charles Pellegrino’s “Ghosts of Hiroshima.” For Cameron, most of his work is likely to touch on one of what he calls “the big three”: Nuclear weapons, machine super intelligence and climate change.

“Avatar,” a family saga that grows more complicated and darker in “Fire and Ash,” relates to the latter. The films are environmental parables, set in a verdant faraway world. Sustainability, community, connection to nature — these are some of the pillars of Cameron’s life right now, in the movies and outside them.

“I’m just a humble movie farmer,” he says, smiling, “who’s also a farmer farmer.”

AP: When you decided to embark on “Avatar,” was it more likely that if you didn’t, you’d spend your time mostly away from movies, doing deep sea exploration and other things?

CAMERON: It was sort of: Do the “Avatar” saga or follow my interests more. I knew that “Avatar” would be all-consuming, and it has been. When I set down that path, a reasonable projection was eight to 10 years to get it all written and do movie two and movie three together and get them out. But it’s actually turned out to be more than that. It was a major commitment and decision to make for me as a life choice. But the “Avatar” movies reach people and they reach people with positive messaging. Not just positive about the environment but positive from the standpoint of humanity, empathy, spirituality, our connection to each other. And they’re beautiful. There’s a kind of magnetic draw into the film. It almost feels like it’s being pulled out of the audience’s dreams and subconscious state.

AP: “Avatar” began as a dream, didn’t it?

CAMERON: I was 19. I was in college and I had a very vivid dream of a bioluminescent forest with glowing moss that reacted to your feet and these little spinning lizards that floated around. It’s all in the movie, by the way. The reason it’s in the movie is because I got up and painted it. That later became the inspiration, just a few years later, for a science-fiction script. I said, “Hey I got this idea for a planet where everything glows at night.” We wrote that in and it never went away.

Years after that, when I was the CEO of Digital Domain, I wanted to push Digital Domain to be able to create CG worlds, CG humanoid creatures using performance capture. I just threw the kitchen sink into the treatment called “Avatar.” So it came from almost a Machiavellian reason. I was trying to drive a business model for the development of CG. Of course, the answer I got from my technical team was: “We are not ready to make this film. We may not be ready for years.” But it still served that inspirational purpose, which was: Well, how do we get ready?

AP: “Ghosts of Hiroshima” would be your first non-“Avatar” feature as director since “Titanic” in 1997. What do you think when you hear that?

CAMERON: It’s interesting. As I said earlier, “Avatar” has been all-consuming. In the process, we’ve developed many new technologies. I enjoy the day-to-day process with a team. I’ve surrounded myself with really intelligent, really creative people who enjoy the process of the world building. We enjoy leveling up in our working process. It’s a long, steady state thing where I’m not having to create a new startup, build a team and then disband that team — the way the movies cycled for me back in the ’80s and ’90s. Now, I’m at a kind of a crossroads where I have to decide if I want to keep doing this.

Four and five are written. If we’re as successful as we might potentially be, I’m sure the films will continue. The question for me will be: Do I direct them both? Do I direct one of them? At what point do I pass the baton? How pervasive do I want it to be in my life?

AP: When do you think you’ll decide?

CAMERON: I’m not going to make any decisions about that until probably Q2 of next year, when the dust has settled. And there are also new technologies to consider. Generative AI is upon us. It’s going to transform the film business. Does that make our work flow easier? Can I make “Avatar” movies more quickly? That would be a big factor for me.

AP: You’ve said the movie industry needs to use technological advances to bring down budgets. Is that the way forward?

CAMERON: The theatrical business is dwindling. Hopefully it doesn’t continue to dwindle. Right now, it’s plateaued at about 30 per cent down from 2019 levels. Let’s hope it doesn’t get cannibalized more. In fact, let’s hope we can bring some of that magic back. But the only way to keep that magic alive and strengthen it is to make the kinds of movies people feel they need to see in a movie theater. Unfortunately, those movies are not getting greenlit as much as they used to be because studios can’t afford them. Or they can only afford to take the risk on certain blue chip stocks, so it doesn’t allow new IP to get launched. It doesn’t allow new filmmakers to come into those genres.

I’d like to see the cost of VFX artists come down. VFX artists get scared and say, “Oh, I’m going to be out of a job.” I’m like, “No, the way you’re going to be out of a job is if trends continue and we just don’t make these kinds of movies anymore.” If you develop these tools or learn these tools, then your throughpoint will be quicker and that will bring the cost of productions down, and studios will be encouraged to make more and more of these types of films. To me, that’s a virtuous cycle that we need to manifest. We need to make that happen or I think theatrical might never return.

AP: I do sometimes feel watching movies like “Lawrence of Arabia” or “Titanic” that these are monuments of a bygone era.

CAMERON: I would love to think that we’ve been building a new monument for the last three or four years. And I think there will always be a market for the new monument builds. The streamers kind of cannibalized the theatrical market with the promise of a lot of money to attract top filmmakers and top casts, and then that money has all retrenched back. The budgets aren’t there. Everything is starting to look like it’s driving toward a mediocrity. Everything starts to look to me like a typical network procedural, or at least that could be an end point within just a couple years.

Unfortunately, the economics of streaming expanded rapidly and then contracted rapidly. Now, we’re betwixt and between models. It’s cannibalized theatrical and, at the same time, it’s not delivering the budgets to do the kind of imaginative, phantasmagorical filmmaking.

AP: “Avatar” has basically unfolded as a family saga. It seems like in these films, what you’re most interested is spirituality and human connection.

CAMERON: The “Avatar” films, and certainly the new one “Fire and Ash,” do exactly the same thing. In a way, they cast us in a good light. The humans in the story are the bad guys. But really what it’s saying is that the attributes we value — our interpersonal and intercommunity connections, our spirituality, our empathy — in the movies they reside in the Na’vi. But of course we as the audience take the Na’vi’s side. So they seem a kind of aspirational, better version of us. In a sense, it’s still empowering and reinforcing certain values and ethics and morals.

Now, it’s a little more challenging in movie three because we show Na’vi who have kind of fallen from grace and are adversarial with other Na’vi. I think one of the reasons “Avatar” has been successful in all markets around the world is because everybody is in a family or wishes they were in a family. They have their ties. They have their tribes. They have their connections. And that’s what these films are about. What would you risk everything for?

AP: Does that apply to “Ghosts of Hiroshima” as well? You’ve spoken about it like a tragedy of disconnection.

CAMERON: “Ghosts of Hiroshima” is about testing our empathy boundaries. Somebody needed to be empathetic to the fact that a nuclear weapon was going to be used against human beings. And I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of should the bombs have been dropped, who was right, who was wrong. But I do want to remind people of what these weapons are capable of doing against targets. It’s unfathomable.

There were three bombs in 1945. One was used as a test and two against people. There are now 12,000 and they range in power from 100 to over 200 times the energy that was generated at either one of those two bombings. We’re in a very precarious world right now. And because of all the geopolitical challenges internationally — more nuclear powers, more saber rattling, unaccountable leadership in #Russia and #America right now — I think we’re in as precarious a situation as we were in the Cuban missile crisis era.

Jake Coyle, The Associated Press

#Taylor Swift and #Travis Kelce’s love story, from friendship bracelets to engagement rings.

It started with a friendship bracelet. It ended with an engagement ring. Taylor Swift, the pop superstar, and Travis Kelce, the football champion, are engaged.

The fiances, both 35, announced the news in a joint post on Instagram on Tuesday. It is the latest chapter in the couple’s love story, one that has spanned two years, two Super Bowls, an album announcement and the highest-grossing tour of all time.

Here is a look at some of the major events in their relationship.
A friendship bracelet, undelivered

It started, fittingly, with a friendship bracelet.

It was way back in July 2023 that Kelce attended Swift’s Eras concert at Arrowhead Stadium, where the Chiefs play.

After, on his “New Heights” podcast with brother Jason Kelce, he professed to being disappointed — well, his word was “butthurt” — that he couldn’t meet Swift and present her with a bracelet with his phone number on it.

“She doesn’t meet anybody, or at least she didn’t want to meet me, so I took it personal,” he quipped. The podcast asked on Instagram: “Anyone know how to get a bracelet to @taylorswift13? … asking for a friend.”
Drivin’ the getaway car

But by that September, Kelce was hinting his efforts had achieved some success. He declined to elaborate amid speculation, telling an interviewer: “It is what it is.”

Clearly, though, something was happening. Soon, Kelce revealed he’d invited Swift to a game at Arrowhead. “I threw the ball in her court,” he said on another talk show.

Swift took Kelce up on his offer, appearing for all the world to see at the Chiefs-Bears game, cheering next to his mom, Donna Kelce. The two left the stadium in Kelce’s purple Chevelle “getaway car” — forgive the pun, but Kelce himself used it.

“Pretty ballsy,” Kelce said a few days later of Swift’s appearance, adding how much he loved seeing her cheer next to his mother.

It was the launch of a long series of appearances by Swift at Chiefs games. There was some online angst over whether Swift was distracting from football — while the NFL itself capitalized on her fandom. A day after the flashy Los Angeles premiere of her “Taylor Swift: Eras Tour” movie, she was back at Arrowhead.
Karma is the guy on the Chiefs

And now it was time for Kelce to be the adoring fan. In November 2023, Swift kicked off the international leg of her Eras tour, beginning in Argentina, where she changed the lyrics of “Karma” to salute her beau. “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs, coming straight home to me,” she sang. Scott Swift, next to a beaming Kelce, applauded his daughter’s new flame.

When Time magazine announced its person of the year, few were surprised. In the Time interview, Swift spoke about her relationship.

“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” Swift said, adding that they’d already been a couple before that first Chiefs game cameo.

Soon after, things were heating up on the football field — meaning the Chiefs were heading to the Super Bowl. At the AFC championship game, the couple made it clear they were fine with whatever attention was coming their way. In the middle of the field in Baltimore, after the Chiefs beat the Ravens, Swift and Kelce kissed. “I love you,” Kelce said. “So much it’s not funny.”
A race across nine time zones

There was one game left. Fans wondered: How would Swift make it from her Tokyo shows to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas?

“This week is truly the best kind of chaos,” Swift posted on Instagram.

Chaos indeed. In one week of February 2024, Swift attended the Grammys in Los Angeles, jetted to Tokyo for four concerts, then jumped back onto her private plane to make the Super Bowl with time to spare. To get there, she crossed nine time zones and the international dateline.

“She’s rewriting the history books herself,” Kelce said a day after the Grammys, where Swift had won album of the year for a record fourth time. “I told her I’ll have to hold up my end of the bargain and come home with hardware, too.”

And he did. The two kissed on the field again after the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers, Swift in her “87” necklace.
On the road again

Within days, Swift was on the road again, with Kelce joining her in Australia for some koala-cuddling at the zoo.

In Paris, Swift introduced a section from “The Tortured Poets Department,” her new album. Fans wondered if Kelce had made his way into some of its lyrics — like “You knew what you wanted and, boy, you got her,” from “So High School.”

But the highlight came in June, during a celebrity-packed set of concerts in London. There, Kelce made his Eras stage debut, donning a tuxedo and top hat and carrying Swift in his arms during a choreographed bit before “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”

“I’m still cracking up/swooning,” Swift wrote later on Instagram.
‘Happiness and fun and magic’

As for Kelce, he spoke with pride about the relationship, noting on the “Bussin’ with the Boys” podcast that he had no desire to hide anything.

“That’s my girl,” he said. “That’s my lady. I’m proud of that.”

Swift echoed that emotion when she accepted an MTV Video Music Award last September, shouting out “my boyfriend Travis” in her speech.

“Everything this man touches turns to happiness and fun and magic,” she said.
‘I am just a jamoke supporting his girlfriend’

Throughout the summer and fall of 2024, Kelce attended a number of Swift’s remaining tour dates and mentioned her on “New Heights,” officially referring to her as “his girlfriend” in a July episode.

“She is every bit of what everyone makes her out to be. She’s so awesome. Some of these people you meet, and you’re just like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’” he said. “You are unbelievable, your talent is unbelievable, how you present yourself is unbelievable and I am just a jamoke supporting his girlfriend.”

Swift, too, was regularly photographed attending Kelce’s games — including the 2025 Super Bowl.
Lights, camera, action, football

A month post-Super Bowl, the couple made their red-carpet debut at the Tight End University in June, an annual three-day training summit founded by Kelce, George Kittle and Greg Olsen.

They were then spotted at Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville, where Swift hopped on stage to perform “Shake it Off” with country singer Kane Brown. For fans, it marked yet another moment of the couple showing very public support and admiration for one another.
‘The Life of a Showgirl’

A couple that collaborates together, stays together.

Swift announced her highly anticipated 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” in mid-August and included Kelce in the rollout. It began with a tease from “New Heights,” which later revealed Swift would appear in an episode the following day.

Swift told the Kelce brothers she wanted to show them something, revealing a mint-green briefcase that featured her initials in orange. Jason Kelce asked what was in it, prompting her to pull out a vinyl record.
‘Our jobs are very similar’

In the two-hour “New Heights” episode featuring Swift, she went into detail about the pair’s summer following the Super Bowl. She said she spent considerable time in Florida with Travis Kelce. She also said “our jobs are very similar”: They revolve around entertaining “people for three hours in NFL stadiums.”

On her self-described “favorite podcast,” Swift credited “New Heights” for getting her a boyfriend. “This is sort of what I’ve been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager,” she said of their romance.

And Kelce credited the tour for, well, getting him a girlfriend. “I see you on that stage and see how you can get an entire stadium going, and then I get you in a room and it’s like I’ve known you forever,” he said. “It’s the easiest conversation I ever had, and it was just so much fun that it knocked my socks off.”
Jock, meet writer

In late August, in a five-photo carousel shared to both Swift and Kelce’s official Instagram accounts, the couple announced their engagement. “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” she wrote in her caption.

It’s unclear when and where the two got engaged.

Jocelyn Noveck And Maria Sherman, The Associated Press

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U.S. House panel to make Epstein files public after redactions to protect victim identities.

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform intends to make public some files it subpoenaed related to the Jeffrey Epstein case, though it will first redact them to shield victims’ IDs and other sensitive matters, a committee spokesperson said Tuesday.

The panel is expected to start receiving materials from the Justice Department on Friday, though it appears the public release will come some time after that. The spokesperson said the committee would work with the Justice Department on the process.

“The Committee intends to make the records public after thorough review to ensure all victims’ identification and child sexual abuse material are redacted. The Committee will also consult with the DOJ to ensure any documents released do not negatively impact ongoing criminal cases and investigations,” the spokesperson said.

Democrats on the committee complained that Comer was slow walking the release of the material by allowing the Justice Department to miss the Tuesday deadline that had been set by the panel and instead turn over the materials to the committee gradually over time starting Friday. They said DOJ had already been directed by the House subpoena to redact material related to victims’ identities and child sexual abuse – questioning the need for further delay to do so.

“Releasing the Epstein files in batches just continues this White House cover-up. The American people will not accept anything short of the full, unredacted Epstein files,” said Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the panel. “In a bipartisan vote, the Committee demanded complete compliance with our subpoena. Handpicked, partial productions are wholly insufficient and potentially misleading, especially after Attorney General Bondi bragged about having the entirety of the Epstein files on her desk mere months ago.”

Many Republicans have called for more transparency surrounding the case and the release of records related to the matter – and the issue has roiled the House.

Speaker Mike Johnson took steps to delay until September a vote of the full House to publicly release the DOJ’s Epstein files. The Louisiana Republican has said he supports transparency in the case but wants to give the administration room to handle the matter.

House Republicans are on track to be forced to take a major vote over the release of information related to Epstein when they return to DC next month.

Earlier on Tuesday, the chair of the powerful House Rules Committee — whose panel has run into drama over Epstein — was staying mum on whether GOP leadership will try to kill that vote altogether.

Rules Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx told reporters Tuesday that she believes the Epstein issue might be “resolved” before the House is forced to take that vote, pointing to the ongoing investigation by the Oversight Committee.

“Chairman Comer has mentioned that he’s getting the material that he’s asked for from the Department of Justice. I’d really like to see this resolved, if possible, before we get back, as much information as possible to come out,” Foxx said.

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