Director James Cameron has said that his WWII drama Last Train From Hiroshima is a “vaporware project,” and was previously talked about “to push the book to a bestseller.” Although James Cameron has spent well over a decade immersed in his Avatar saga, the director has talked about other projects at various points. One promising-sounding ... James Cameron’s Hiroshima movie is a “vaporware project,” he says
Director James Cameron has said that his WWII drama Last Train From Hiroshima is a “vaporware project,” and was previously talked about “to push the book to a bestseller.”
Although James Cameron has spent well over a decade immersed in his Avatar saga, the director has talked about other projects at various points. One promising-sounding non-Avatar movie he’s discussed is Last Train From Hiroshima, an adaptation of Charles Pellegrino’s 2015 book, and its follow-up, Ghosts Of Hiroshima, which came out last year.
Cameron purchased the film rights to the books last year, and talked enthusiastically about adapting them, saying that he’d wanted to make something about the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for some time.
The filmmaker has now changed his tune, however. Speaking on The Town podcast (via World of Reel), Cameron has said that it’s merely one of “ten other projects,” and that he previously talked about it because Pellegrino is a friend of his and wanted to help boost sales of the books.
“I have ten other projects; that one just sort of hit the headlines because of the book announcement and trying to push the book to a bestseller because the author is a friend of mine,” Cameron said.
While adding that this “doesn’t mean I’m not going to make a film,” he said that a weighty WWII drama isn’t high on his to-do list, either.
“I haven’t written the script and it’s not slated right now, and I don’t even have a distribution partner on it,” he said. “So it’s pretty much a vaporware project right now. I’ve got a couple of other projects that I’ve purchased or optioned or written.”
Among Cameron’s other projects are a Billie Eilish concert film, out next year, a Battle Angel sequel, which he’ll produce and possibly co-write if it happens, and an adaptation of Joe Abercrombie’s fantasy novel The Devils. He optioned the latter earlier this year because, he said, it’s “off its tits.” Unless, of course, that was also a bit more sales-boosting hype.
Cameron has form when it comes to bigging up his comrades’ ventures. Ahead of the release of Terminator: Genisys in 2015, he said, “If you like Terminator films, you’re going to love this movie.”
He later admitted that he just said that to help out his old friend and collaborator, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Four years later, he said that Terminator: Dark Fate was a “white knuckle ride.” Then, months after the movie came out and didn’t do terribly well, he described it as “your granddad’s Terminator movie.”
Incidentally, James Cameron is also an enthusiastic proponent of generative AI.
Avatar: Fire And Ash is out in UK cinemas on the 19th December. Cameron says it’s “maybe the best of the three so far.”
