James Cameron is stepping away from his billion-dollar Avatar franchise to tackle a gritty new project that couldn’t be more different from his sci-fi spectacle, per hollywoodreporter.com.
The Titanic director’s production company Lightstorm Entertainment has secured rights to The Devils, the latest dark fantasy novel from acclaimed author Joe Abercrombie. Cameron will co-write the screenplay adaptation alongside Abercrombie himself.
“The freshness of the world and the characters in The Devils finally got me off my butt to buy one of his books and partner with him to bring it to the screen,” Cameron announced on Facebook. The 70-year-old filmmaker praised Abercrombie’s writing throughout his epic First Law series and Age of Madness trilogy.
This marks a dramatic shift from Cameron’s underwater alien adventures. The Devils centres on a specialised monster squad tasked with saving Europe from carnivorous elves—a far cry from Pandora’s bioluminescent forests.
The timing aligns perfectly with Cameron’s Avatar schedule. The third installment, Avatar: Fire and Ash, hits theaters this December, followed by sequels in 2029 and 2031. Cameron recently revealed the upcoming film will be even longer than The Way of Water’s three-hour runtime.
“Movie 3 will actually be a little bit longer than movie 2,” he told Empire magazine, explaining they split overpacked storylines to let characters “breathe.”
Abercrombie expressed excitement about the collaboration: “I can’t think of anyone better to bring this weird and wonderful monster of a book to the screen.”
Cameron’s genre-hopping isn’t unprecedented—he’s masterfully navigated science fiction, romance and action throughout his career. Early screenings of Fire and Ash have generated buzz, with Cameron calling it “definitely the most emotional and maybe the best of the three so far.”
