Empire Magazine has published a preview of some of the content that can be found in its March 2025 issue, and with it comes some excerpts of a new interview with James Cameron, one in which the 70-year-old director shares new insights regarding Avatar: Fire and Ash—his third Avatar film—and how it will take viewers to “places they won’t expect, but that will feel earned.”
“We’ve got some really clever action set-pieces,” Cameron told Empire for its 28 Years Later issue, which goes on sale tomorrow, on January 16. “You can get your blood up in this movie. But what excites me as an artist who recently turned 70 and has kind of done all that stuff is not only the opportunity to get to do it again, but to get to a level of character and intrigue you haven’t seen before in an Avatar movie.”
“We’re just starting to riff on it and twist it and turn it,” Cameron continued before going on to clarify that Avatar 3 will raise the storytelling stakes, explaining that the process has been “a tricky thing. We could be getting high on our own supply here, and everybody who looks at it goes, ‘Fuck, that’s not what I signed up for.’ But if you’re not making brave choices, you’re wasting everybody’s time and money. That alone is not sufficient to create success, but it’s necessary. You’ve got to break the mold every fricking time.”
See below for the two new images of Avatar: Fire and Ash that Empire exclusively revealed today, one of which shows off the Ash Clan—a new group that Cameron says has “gone through an incredible hardship.”
“They’re nomadic traders, equivalent to the camel caravans of the Spice Road back in the Middle Ages,” Cameron said of the Wind Traders, which are teased in the photo above. “And you know, they’re just fun. Like all Na’vi, they live in a symbiosis with their creatures. If you’ve got any nautical blood in your veins, you’ll want to be on [their] ship.”
“Get ready to journey back to Pandora, in theaters December 19, 2025,” reads a message on the official Avatar website.