The Avatar films have basically taken over James Cameron’s career to the point he hasn’t been able to do anything else. Remember, he was going to direct Alita Battle Angel himself before he had to hand it over to Robert Rodriguez due to being too busy. Cameron is one of our greatest filmmakers and he makes iconic, record-breaking movies. To see him stuck doing just one thing for so long is a big disappointment to his legion of fans. Well, there’s been some good news, because Cameron has found the first non-Avatar project he intends to direct.
Deadline reports Cameron has acquired the movie rights to Charles Pellegrino‘s upcoming book Ghosts of Hiroshima. Cameron will combine that with elements of Pellegrino’s previous book to serve as the basis for a feature film, Last Train From Hiroshima, that he plans to direct once Avatar production eases up.
You may recall that Cameron first began eyeing this project as a potential directing vehicle last year.
Pellegrino’s non-fiction books tell the incredible true story of a Japanese man in WWII who survived the nuclear bomb blast at Hiroschima. Fleeing to Nagasaki, he then survived another nuclear explosion blast there.
“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 said. “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.” While visiting Yamaguchi, Cameron and Pellegrino pledged to “pass on his unique and harrowing experience to future generations.”
Cameron hasn’t directed a non-Avatar film since Titanic in 1997, an unbelievable fact.
So is Last Train From Hiroshima going to be Cameron’s Oppenheimer? The two projects couldn’t sound more different. Cameron has been obsessed with with the nuclear war threat since Terminator and Terminator 2, so this is very much keeping with that.
