Why the Avatar saga might never be completed

James Cameron is continuing to make the most grandiose movies imaginable, even as the cinema-releasing landscape is changing around him, says Geoffrey Macnab

Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington in 2009’s ‘Avatar’ – a film with four sequels in the works (20th Century Fox)

In the summer of 1997, there were terrible misgivings in Hollywood that film director James Cameron was about to blast a gigantic hole in the finances of two major studios. His blockbuster Titanic, which Fox and Paramount were co-financing, was over budget, over schedule and had just moved its release date from July to December. According to film trade paper Variety, the delay had cost Fox “an additional $20m or so in interest payments” to what was already the most expensive film ever made.

Media outlets were circling the project with the same morbid and ghoulish relish they always show when they sniff blood in the water. Reports and rumours were circulating of the director’s bullying, autocratic behaviour on set, of injuries to stunt performers, and of how the star Kate Winslet had allegedly caught pneumonia after spending too long in the freezing cold.

Winslet, who said she suffered hypothermia and nearly drowned twice, contemplated leaving the production, reported the LA Times. “You’d have to pay me a lot of money to work with Jim again,” she said.