- James Cameron is one step closer to producing his long-held WWII passion project after acquiring the rights to Charles R. Pellegrino’s forthcoming Ghosts of Hiroshima.
- The Academy Award-winning director had previously snapped up Pellegrino’s other book The Last Train From Hiroshima; and plans to tell a story from the survivors’ perspective.
- Currently, Cameron’s answer to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer will enter production after Avatar: Fire & Ash wraps.
Whether we like it or not, there are plenty more Avatar movies on the horizon. But before he spends another decade or so on Avatar sequels — Avatar: Fire & Ash is already in the can and due out Christmas 2025 — James Cameron is setting aside the time for another history-based passion project that’ll also break the bank.
This one is about Hiroshima and, unlike Christopher Nolan’s critically acclaimed Oppenheimer, which features an all-star cast led by latest Best Actor winner Cillian Murphy, it’ll be told from the perspective of the atomic bomb’s victims.
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Speaking with Deadline, Cameron confirmed he’s recently purchased the rights to Charles R. Pellegrino’s forthcoming book Ghosts of Hiroshima. Along with Pellegrino’s 2010 book, The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back, the legendary director plans to combine the two works into a single adaptation, which he describes as an “uncompromising theatrical film.”
The adaptation has been on James Cameron’s radar since 2010 when the Academy Award-winning filmmaker reportedly visited and interviewed Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only known survivor who was present when atomic bombs were dropped in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki; wherein he and Pellegrino pledged to Yamaguchi that they’d help “pass on his unique and harrowing experience to future generations.”
Yamaguchi passed away soon after, while Cameron would be impeded by his own success. This time, however, it won’t stop the latter from fulfilling his decade-long ambition to give Pellegrino’s book the big screen treatment.
“We live in a more precarious world than we thought we did,” James Cameron told The LA Times, reflecting on the war in Ukraine and resurgent nationalism.
“I think the Hiroshima film would be as timely as ever, if not more so. It reminds people what these weapons really do when they’re used against human targets.”
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While it seems that all systems are go at this stage, it’s still unclear whether James Cameron’s Hiroshima movie will ever actually become a material reality.
Granted, the man isn’t exactly a stranger to taking his sweet time; the first Avatar, for example, was initially penned all the way back in 1994. Although there have been occasions wherein plans eventually went nowhere, i.e. his oddly sexual Spider-Man flick starring Leonardo DiCaprio which (thankfully) fizzled, an earlier version of Robert Rodriguez’s Battle Angel Alita.
As always, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.
