James Cameron has set his first post-Avatar movie, Deadline reports: a World War 2 drama titled Last Train From Hiroshima.
The film will tell the remarkable true story of a Japanese man who survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshima in 1945, then got on a train to Nagasaki and survived the atomic blast there, too. This will be Cameron's first non-Avatar project since 1997's Titanic.
Last Train to Hiroshima will be based on two nonfiction books – 2015's Last Train from Hiroshima and the yet-to-be-published Ghosts of Hiroshima, both of which center around eyewitness accounts of the bombings – that will be adapted into one "uncompromising theatrical film."
"It’s a subject that I’ve wanted to do a film about, that I’ve been wrestling with how to do it, over the years," Cameron told Deadline. "I met Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just days before he died. He was in the hospital. He was handing the baton of his personal story to us, so I have to do it. I can’t turn away from it."
The movie will be made "as soon as Avatar production permits," but that could still be a while away. The third film in the franchise is coming out next year, with the fourth and fifth installments following in 2029 and 2031. Cameron has previously said he has plans for Avatar 6 and 7, too.
