Get your popcorn early — and don’t forget to hit the bathroom pre-show. It looks like James Cameron’s next Avatar film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, will be clocking in over three hours long.
According to an AMC landing page for the movie, Fire and Ash will officially run three hours and 15 minutes long. So, needless to say, this is going to be a whole lot of Avatar, and fans of the franchise are going to be excited to spend so much time on Pandora.
In a recent interview with IGN, Cameron opened up about how Fire and Ash plays into the franchise and revealed that this new film and the previous film, 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water, make up what he considers to be a “complete story.”
“I think it’s important to think of [The Way of Water] and [Fire and Ash] as a complete story that fully resolves. [They] form one complete story arc,” he told us last month. “For me, these films are about the darkness and the light that exists within us. It’s not about humans versus Na’vi. The Na’vi represent our better nature and the humans in the story represent our more venal and greedy and less empathetic nature. You see that in [The Way of Water], you’ll see it again in [Fire and Ash].”
There’s clearly a lot to look forward to in this franchise — but only if fans show up at the theater for Fire and Ash. “If we get to movie 4, if. I want to emphasize that,” Cameron explained in his chat with IGN. “It all depends on whether we’re successful this time. It’s always conditional. So [Avatar] 4 and 5 are kind of their own story, and we’ll make those films together if we make them.”
This is the third installment of the Avatar film series and a sequel film to The Way of Water. Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Signourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, and Stephen Lang are all set to return and reprise their roles from the previous installments.
Avatar: Fire and Ash is set to arrive in theaters on December 16, 2025.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
