James Cameronis one of the most popular names in Hollywood, and one of the most successful filmmakers of all time. His original script forThe Terminatorlaunched a multimedia franchise (despite beingsold for one dollar). HisAliensandTerminator 2: Judgement Dayare often regarded as some of the greatest sequels ever made. While everyone predictedTitanicwould be a box office bomb, it went on to become the highest-grossing movie of all time, a record it held for 12 years until it was dethroned but another James Cameron movie,Avatar.
Avatarstill stands as the highest-grossing movie worldwide with over $2.8 billion, a number that will likely climb higher with thefilm’s 3D re-releaseplanned for September 2022. Cameron is a director who can hold the distinct titles of directing the first movie with a $100 million budget (True Lies), directing two of thehighest-grossing movies of all time, and the first director to have two $2 billion worldwide films.
While most directors tend to work rather frequently, Cameron has not directed a narrative feature film sinceAvatarin 2009, and his next film is the sequelAvatar: The Way of Water. That means it has been 13 years since audiences got to see a James Cameron movie, which beats his previous hiatus betweenTitanicandAvatarby one year. Despite the director only helming two narrative films in the last 25 years, he has certainly been hard at work. Not only has he been looking to continue his Pandora story, turning it into a massive saga, but he has also been an active producer and documentarian, developing state-of-the-art technology, and doing his part to make the world a better place. Here is what James Cameron has been up to since 2009.
Working On Four Avatar Sequels
Arguably the largest endeavor of Cameron’s career, the director has been developing sequels toAvatarsince the release of the first film. Cameron isn’t just making one sequel, but planning four films which have been a massive undertaking spanning nearly a whole decade of work.
The original plan was that Cameron would direct threeAvatar sequels back to back with release dates set for 2016, 2017, and 2018. However, the addition of a fourth sequel, and the necessity to develop new technology in order to film performance capture scenes underwater, a task that had never been accomplished before, led to significant delays. This allowed Cameron and the crew more time to work on the writing, preproduction, and visual effects for the film. Cameron estimated that it took four years to write the fourAvatarsequel scripts with writers, and it took WETA a year and a half to develop the technology to film motion capture underwater. Filming onAvatar 2andAvatar 3officially started in 2017 and concluded three years later in 2020.
Avatar: The Way of Wateris set for release on June 13, 2025, withAvatar 3set for release on June 19, 2025.Avatar 4andAvatar 5have yet to begin filming but are scheduled for June 17, 2025, and August 17, 2025, respectively, yet Cameron has recently implied hemight let someone direct those films.
James Cameron’s Documentary Work
In the 12-year gap betweenTitanicandAvatar, Cameron directed two documentary feature films and produced multiple television ones and the filmmaker has also done the same since the release ofAvatar.
Cameron has a prolific documentary career. In 2012 Cameron appeared as himself in three documentary television specials,Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron,James Cameron: Voyage to the Bottom of the Earth,andA New Age of Exploration: National Geographic at 125. In 2014, Cameron and frequent collaborator Arnold Schwarzenegger executive producedthe original Showtimedocumentary seriesYears of Living Dangerouslyfocused on climate change and tackled issues of rising sea levels, deforrestation, and water scarceity to name a few, and featured a variety of guest hosts including Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, and Barack Obama.
Related:Avatar: James Cameron’s Dedication to the Franchise Should Be RespectedIn 2018, he was the host of a six-part documentary series on A&E titledJames Cameron’s Story of Science Fictionwhere he interviewed famousscience fiction figures like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Ridley Scott to name a few. Most recently he was the executive producer on the National Geographic and Disney+ seriesSecrets of Whalesnarrated by Aliens and Avatar star Sigourney Weaver.
James Cameron is an Active Producer
While Cameron has been busy working onAvatar: The Way of Waterand its upcoming sequels, the director has also lent his clout to other projects. Most notably, he finally was able to get his long-in-development filmAlita: Battle Angelreleased by hiring Robert Rodriguez to direct, and the duo collaborated on the script.Alita: Battle Angelwas released on June 30, 2025, and was the final film released by 20th Century Fox as its own studio before becoming acquired by the Walt Disney Company. While it only grossed $85.8 million domestically, worldwide it brought in $405 million and ever since then fanshave been hoping for a sequel. 2019 also saw Cameron return to theTerminatorseries, as he was a producer and writer onTerminator: Dark Fate.
Related:Every James Cameron Movie, RankedIn Hollywood, sometimes even a name like James Cameron isn’t enough to get a movie off the ground. In 2010, shortly afterAvatarwas released and broke box office records, Cameron signed on as a producer on the Universal Pictures' adaptation ofAt The Mountain of Madnesswhich would havebeen directed by Guillermo del Toro. The film was meant to be in 3D and Tom Cruise was considered for the lead role, however Universal Pictures pulled the plug on the movie in 2011 as the studio didn’t want to invest a $200 million budget in an R-rated film, and it was reportedly too similar toPrometheuswhich was being developed at 20th Century Fox at the same time.
James Cameron’s Environmental Activism
As seen in many of his films and documentaries, Cameron has strong beliefs about the nature of the planet and how humans treat it. In the years sinceAvatar, he has taken an active effort to speak out for global efforts to help combat climate change, including making documentary series likeYears of Living Dangerouslyto inform the public.
In 2012, Cameron and his family adopted a vegan diet, as he and his wife have become advocates of plant food and called for planet-based meal plans and less focus on meat to help mitigate climate change (they even openeda vegan K-12 school). The same year, Cameron purchased more than 2,471 acres of land in remote South Wairarapa, New Zealand in which they grow a variety of organic fruit, nuts, and vegetables. In 2018 Cameron was the executive producer onThe Game Changers, a documentary about athletes who have plant-based diets. Then in June 2019, Cameron announced a business venture withLord of the Ringstrilogy director Peter Jackson to produce plant-based meat, cheese, and dairy products in New Zealand. Cameron not only wants to make movies that change cinema, but also wants to do his part in saving the planet.
