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The Avatar franchise has been a major success at the box office, and on Dec. 19, director James Cameron’s third installment in the franchise, Avatar: Fire and Ash, hit theaters.
The first two films, released in 2009 and 2022, respectively, have become the No. 1 and No. 3 highest-grossing movies of all time — and audiences are eager to see what happens next in the franchise.
While the production of the upcoming movies has been relatively secretive, Cameron and producer Jon Landau have shared a bit about the films, giving fans hints at what to expect from the franchise moving forward. While speaking to Deadline in December 2025, Cameron confirmed that Fire and Ash will close the story arc in the first three movies, but he’s not yet ready to discuss the next two movies in the series.
“It’s hard for me to think about that right now,” he said. “I always use the metaphor that if a woman is in labor, at the moment she’s crowning, you don’t ask her about her next children.”
Avatar 4 is slated to premiere on Dec. 21, 2029, while Avatar 5 will release on Dec. 19, 2031.
Here’s everything to know about the upcoming Avatar sequels.
What is Avatar 4 about?
Courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Little is known about the plot of Avatar 4, which will be released in December 2029. However, in an Entertainment Weekly interview in 2022, Cameron said that on page 35 of the fourth film’s script, there’s a big move forward in time, allowing the young actors to age up naturally within the film’s storyline.
“They’re young men, young women at that point, when we get to the B side of that time jump,” he told the publication.
Cameron told PEOPLE more specifics on the plot’s progression in December 2023. “We see them and then we go away for six years and we come back,” the director said. “And so the part where we come back is the part we haven’t shot yet. So we’ll start on that after three is released.”
He also told Collider in 2022 that the studio loved the Avatar 4 script. “I can’t tell you the details,” Cameron said, “but all I can say is that when I turned in the script for 2, the studio gave me three pages of notes. And when I turned in the script for 3, they gave me a page of notes, so I was getting better.”
He continued, “When I turned in the script for 4, the creative executive over the films wrote me an email that said, ‘Holy f—.’ And I said, ‘Well, where are the notes?’ And she said, ‘Those are the notes.’ Because it kind of goes nuts in a good way, right?”
Has Avatar 4 started filming?
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Courtesy Everett
Some of Avatar 4 was filmed in tandem with 2 and 3 and is already completed.
When appearing on Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace in early 2023, per The Hollywood Reporter, Cameron talked about his timeline for the upcoming sequels.
“Avatar 4 and 5 are both written. We even have some of 4 in the can. We’ve begun a franchise at this point. We’ve begun a saga that can now play out over multiple films.”
Landau previously confirmed this schedule in a 2022 interview with Variety. “We’ve completed most of the first act of Avatar 4 and there were logistical reasons why we needed to do that,” the producer said. “We’ve designed most of the whole movie for Avatar 4 but we haven’t actually filmed all of it — just the first act.”
When will Avatar 4 release in theaters?
The fourth movie is set to hit theaters on Dec. 21, 2029.
What is Avatar 5 about?
20th Century Fox
Speaking to Gizmodo in 2022, Landau revealed a major plot point from Avatar 5: the producer said that the fifth film will bring the Na’vi to Earth.
“I wasn’t going to talk about it, but I’ve now subsequently heard that Jim [Cameron] has talked about it a little bit,” the producer said. “In movie five there is a section of the story where we go to Earth. And we go to it to open people’s eyes, open Neytiri’s eyes, to what exists on Earth.”
Landau’s statement also revealed that Neytiri (Saldaña’s character) will survive the next two sequels and be an integral character in the final film.
“Earth is not just represented by the RDA [the evil organization in the film; the abbreviation stands for Resources Development Administration], just like you’re defined by the choices you make in life, not all humans are bad,” Landau said. “Not all Na’vi are good. And that’s the case here on Earth. And we want to expose Neytiri to that.”
When will Avatar 5 release in theaters?
Avatar 5 is expected to be released on Dec. 19, 2031.
