James Cameron Quietly Co-Directed A Non-Avatar Movie Coming Out In 2026

James Cameron is a man of many talents. He's a phenomenal director with a very successful career, he's a deep-sea explorer and a maverick, and he's a man of endless imagination when it comes to weird little creatures in space. Cameron has given us many spectacular films across a variety of genres, but for better or worse, he's spent the past two decades working on a single universe, devoting his time to the "Avatar" franchise and the world of Pandora. Though it's clear Cameron continues to use Pandora as a sandbox for his various interests, the filmmaker also mourns the movies he won't be able to make because he's so busy with "Avatar."

Well, it seems Cameron decided to do something about that, because next year, he's delivering his first non-"Avatar" or non-submarine film since 1997: He's co-directing a Billie Eilish concert film with Eilish herself. According to a press release from Paramount Pictures, the studio is releasing "Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D)," which was shot during a few nights of Eilish's sold-out world tour, and the concert film will debut on March 20, 2026.

The fact that this is in 3D is interesting, and also not especially surprising considering this is Cameron we're talking about. There will surely be plenty of speculation as to why this is the exact project Cameron decided to co-direct (and how involved he was in the directing), but we're wondering if Cameron is ready to start imagining a future beyond the one he's created in the "Avatar" movies.

Cameron has been making announcements recently regarding his future. We know he wants to make "Last Train From Hiroshima" based on Charles Pellegrino's book "Ghost of Hiroshima," presumably because Cameron was so mad at Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" that he wants to fix his perceived issues by making another movie about the bomb.

We still don't know whether Cameron will actually direct the rest of his intended five-film "Avatar" series. He's previously talked about stepping down and letting someone else direct the next movies, but he also said earlier this year (via Variety) that "there's no reason not to" keep going and that he's "good to go" on making the fourth and fifth "Avatar." 

Other filmmakers might say they're going to alternate between films, and Cameron could seemingly go from "Fire and Ash" to that horror movie he announced before then making "Avatar 4" in the event he wanted to direct "The Devils" instead of just co-writing it. The problem is that "Avatar" is a rather time-consuming franchise. Even if they have absurdly long post-production times due to all the tech wizardry Cameron wants to do in each film, which could theoretically allow him to step out and do something else, it seems unlikely he'd actually want to divert his attention fully away from Pandora. But we know Cameron filmed quite a lot of the next film already, and that it has a time skip. That could allow Cameron to take a break and do something else before returning to Pandora older and even more ambitious. We're eager to see this concert film and to see if he's willing to continue to expand his interests outside of the dazzling world of Pandora.