Why Avatar Director James Cameron Thinks His Atomic Bomb Movie Will Be His Least Popular

There was a point — sometime before he released "Avatar: The Way of Water" in 2022 — when James Cameron said that he only wanted to make "Avatar" sequels for the rest of his career. Now that's he completed his third film in that series, "Avatar: Fire and Ash," Cameron has walked that back a little bit. Inspired by the success of Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" in 2023, Cameron decided to finally start developing a project based on the bombing of Hiroshima, a project he has been mulling over for quite some time. Specifically, Cameron aimed to make a film extrapolated from Charles Pellegrino's books "Ghosts of Hiroshima" (2025) and "The Last Train from Hiroshima" (2010). Cameron became deeply interested in the survivors of America's notoriously deadly attack on Japan, and even interviewed Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the attack's last survivor, in 2010. He was talking about his Hiroshima project as far back as 2010. 

Cameron seemingly wants to make a film about the Hiroshima bombing as a rebuke of his own "Terminator" movies. In a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Cameron pointed out that science fiction movies make the nuclear apocalypse look like something that's not only easily survivable, but also "fun." Many seem to think that a nuclear war will create a wilder world of Mad Max cars and mutated super-monsters that one can do battle with.

Cameron wanted to stress that there won't be mutants and cool vehicles after a nuclear strike. "It's Hell," he said. And a movie about a real nuclear strike would be a bleak, bummer of a movie. He still wants to make "Ghosts of Hiroshima," but he knows it'll fail at the box office.

Cameron said that he aims for his "Ghosts of Hiroshima" film to be wholly authentic, and has already been talking to many Japanese filmmakers and historians to assure that it is. Even though he hasn't yet written the script, Cameron carries so much clout in Hollywood that he already has many people lining up, willing to work on the picture with him. If Cameron does get the film made, it will be his first historical drama since "Titanic" in 1997. It will also be, like "Titanic," a rare entry in his filmography that is not science fiction. 

When asked if audiences would accept the idea of a white Canadian filmmaker making a film about Hiroshima, Cameron was blunt, saying:

"F*** 'em, I don't care. [...] I'm going to tell this story. Because why? Because nobody else is doing it. If you want to haul off and make the film, I'll hand you the book. But nobody's putting their hand up to do this. It'll probably be the least-attended movie I ever make. It's not a pretty sight what a nuclear bomb does to human beings." 

Cameron's films tend to become overwhelming popular, with three of his films (to date) being in the five highest-grossing of all time. We'll see how "Fire and Ash" shakes out. "Ghosts of Hiroshima," however, seems to be Cameron not only stepping away from his sci-fi wheelhouse, but deliberately skewing toward the horrific; this will be no broad crowd pleaser. 

But then, Nolan's "Oppenheimer" was also a bum-out movie about how human pride and hubris will potentially destroy the world, and that film was a massive hit. So maybe Cameron will prove himself wrong. Perhaps "Ghosts of Hiroshima" will be his biggest hit yet.