When James Cameron's Avatar first hit cinemas in 2009, it was a groundbreaking movie; it was way ahead of its time in terms of visual effects and scale. It remains the highest-grossing film of all time. Cameron always wanted to make sequels, and he got his wish over a decade later in 2022 with Avatar: The Way of Water. There wasn't as long a wait for the third movie, Avatar: Fire and Ash, which premiered in December 2025.
As for the fourth Avatar movie, Cameron admits that the he and the team "haven't even made a decision to move forward," although it is likely to happen. "But should I do that," he told Screen Rant in a recent interview, "which I will say is likely, but not 100% - we will definitely learn from the lessons of all three films."
With the Avatar sequels, Cameron is going through the elements. He's now ventured into water and fire, introducing a number of fan-favorite characters on the journey. In Fire & Ash, fans loved (or better yet, loved to hate) newcomer Varang (Oona Chaplin), the cruel and ruthless leader of the Ash People. While she played a key role in Fire and Ash, Cameron believes there's more than enough scope to significantly bolster her character development in another installment.
"From Fire and Ash, Varang may need to be written up a little bit moving forward," Cameron admitted. "She kind of just took her place amongst all the others, because there are a lot of characters and plates spinning in the story. So, yeah, we might want to make her a little more [prominent]."
With these sequels, nothing is set in stone. If a character performs well with audiences, Cameron is more than happy to accommodate them further in the next movie. For instance, after Payakan emerged as a fan-favorite, he returned for a significant role in Fire and Ash. "That's a good problem to have when people are really responding to an element," he said. "In The Way of Water, people really responded resoundingly to Payakan. He was literally the highest-rated character in the film. I didn't tell the actors that. But it's like,'I guess we better put Payakan into Fire and Ash.' You learn as you go forward. It's evolving."
While no further Avatar sequels are officially announced, it's pretty clear that the franchise will continue. In fact, Cameron himself has previously laid out plans for movies up to Avatar 5, which would release in 2031. Whether the franchise has enough momentum to actually get there, we'll have to wait and see.