James Cameron’s wife ‘bawled’ for hours after watching ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’

James Cameron’s wife had an intense emotional reaction to Avatar: Fire and Ash, the upcoming third installment of the sci-fi franchise.

Speaking with Empire, the filmmaker revealed that his wife of 25 years, Suzy Amis Cameron, “bawled for four hours” after she watched a version of the film late last year. “My wife watched the whole thing from end to end — she had kept herself away from it and I wasn’t showing her bits and pieces as we went along,” said Cameron. “She bawled for four hours.”

So much so that Cameron never did quite receive any type of feedback from her. “She kept trying to get her shit back together so she could tell me specific reactions, and then she’d just tear up and start crying again,” recalled Cameron with a laugh. “Finally, I’m like, ‘Honey, I’ve got to go to bed. Sorry, we’ll talk about it some other time.'”

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As for whether Amis Cameron’s reaction should be indicative of what’s to come, “She’s a pretty good bellwether,” noted Cameron. “She called the ball on Titanic and Avatar and Avatar 2. So I trust her heart on it.”

Plot details for Fire and Ash, the third installment out of a planned five so far, are sparse at the time, but Cameron told Entertainment Weekly last summer that the film title itself hints at the storyline.

“I don’t think I could say too much about it until you actually see the film and you see what it means, but if you think of fire as hatred, anger, violence, that sort of thing, and ash is the aftermath,” said Cameron. “So what’s the aftermath? Grief, loss, right? And then what does that cause in the future? More violence, more anger, more hatred. It’s a vicious cycle. So that’s the thinking.”

The filmmaker also recently confirmed that Fire and Ash “will actually be a little bit longer” than 2022’s The Way of Water, which had a runtime of 3 hours and 12 mins. “You’ll see a lot more Pandora that you never saw before,” Cameron teased at D23 last year. “The new film is not what you expect, but it’s definitely what you want.”

Avatar: Fire and Ash arrives in theaters Dec. 19, 2025.