20/20 - Avatar: A New Era -- Special Edition of 20/20

Episode Date: December 13, 2025

Meet the man behind "Avatar: Fire and Ash," director James Cameron, who reveals what unlikely personal experiences inspired the "Avatar" film phenomenon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our love will never fade away with What we set out to do with Avatar is not just tell a good story, but to tell that story in terms that have a lot of impact on the audience. We try to create this world and invite you into it and let you live in it. Even through the place, even through the ashes in the sky. Baby, when we dream, we dream as one. Now here's the latest avatar film, Fire and Ash. The title alone, I was immediately drawn in, living through fire, rebuilding, resilience, and kind of this phoenix attitude.

My goal was to see us through these fantasy characters and see how it reflects back. on us i sort of feel like the world of movie making and all its technology has finally caught up with jim cameron's brain it's like going through a portal into this other world if you thought that way of water was big and impactful fire and ash is going to be an experience unlike anything i've always said when you come to a jim cameron set bring your a game all right so let's try this and action Fire is the only pure thing in this world. I think what makes Jim special are his dreams. There is one moment you just sort of think,

how can one person have thought of all this? It does kind of blow your mind. Park it. I've created this little stupid ritual. Every morning when I get my socks out of my sock drawer, I remind myself to be grateful that I get to do the coolest job on the planet. Because it's, you know, there's a lot of pressure, there's a lot of tension. Your cortisol levels go up.

It's good to remind yourself to be grateful that you get to do the coolest stuff. coolest stuff. We got to come up with safety protocols and make an actor safe. We've got to treat it like the space program. He's always a man on a mission. He's got to do it like a tiller. He arrives each day with a real plan on where he wants the day to go. They've created a little atmosphere, a little Pandora atmosphere.

Jim, as much as he is relentless and determined and so much of a detailed perfectionist, he has some such a big heart, and he cares so much about what he does and what it means to him. The first two Avatar movies sold a combined 589 million tickets. Along with the thrill rod, and all the fun of a big action film, they got to see what matters most to Jim Cameron. Wherever we go, this family is our fortress. It's why, in part, he makes these movies.

I had a dream, I was 19, and I had a dream of a bioluminescent forest. I woke up and I sketched it in color. And it had glowing trees and purple moss and these kind of trees that kind of looked like fiber optics. In 95, I wrote a treatment for Avatar. It had all the characters, all the creatures, all the set pieces. And it turned out to be too challenging, and we waited. He realized that the technology did not exist, that it would enable him to tell the story the way he wanted to.

If you were any other filmmaker, you'd go, that's too bad. But if you're Jim Cameron, you go, I'm going to help make that technology so that the movie can happen. We wound up waiting 10 years. By 2005, I felt that the things I wanted to do, were within striking distance, so we set ourselves down the path of Avatar. Jim led the way to doing something called performance capture, which was doing the total body and covering every single thing that an actor might do.

It's an evolution of a tool that exists, and we used to call it motion capture. Performance capture speaks to the holistic capture of the performance. The actors don't do motion, they do emotion. We are all about the actor. I call it the sanctity of the moment of performance. When we film it, it's a very calm set because everybody's digging in to tell their story as truthfully as they can. And out of that, you're trying to capture lightning in a bottle.

The success of the Avatar franchise is literally off the charts. The first Avatar in 2009 makes $2.9 billion. and that becomes the highest grossing film of all time. Then 13 years later, Avatar the Way of Water, brings the saga back and earns $2.3 billion. And now you've got fire and ash. It's definitely a step forward and a technical level, but I think it's a bigger step forward in terms of just the emotional depth.

Look, I'm a Marine. I'm not taking a knife to a gunfight. Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully. He is a human who has become a member of the Navi, and he is the patriarch of this family. Zoe Saldanya, who is now an Oscar winner, thanks to Amelia Perez. She plays Natiri, who is Jake Sully's wife,

and who is the matriarch. Even more than a blended family, it's really a mixed-race family. And so how does their community look upon them, and more importantly, their children? Are you some kind of freak? The most important things he wants to say, about human behavior.

No. Are you sure? Can be found in that family. And it's where he minds the greatest emotions throughout. I try to be character-driven in all my movies. I think this one is more driven from a place of character. For the kids, they lost a brother. For the parents, they lost a son.

You don't recover from that. I can't run. I can't fight. That's right. A-W will provide. So where was A-W? Where was A-W when our son... Jake!

They are broken, and they're hanging at the seams. There's a lot of confusion. There's also a lot of love, a lot of desperation. You cannot live like this, baby, in hate. I think this is one of the big questions of the film. Can we save ourselves from hatred that propagates through creating loss in other people. Is there a way for us to be human

and to be empathetic and to be compassionate within that and break that cycle? Solis never quit. That's right. Solis never quit. It's a powerful emotion, but it's not the kind of thing you usually see in a blockbuster,

and Cameron's just taking it right on. It's all about the connection that people have to the land. and the ash people are connected to the fire. We have new characters. Varong is a character who is the leader of the ash people. We have a magnificent performance from Una Chaplin to build around. Una Chaplin is the granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin. There!

Ash people come from a place that was devastated by a natural disaster. The fire came from the mountain. bent our forest. She saw her people, she saw the depth of the suffering and the grief and the pain, and she harnessed the power of the fire. You are strong, skyman. It was a real exercise for me, and like being power hungry, whoa. What drives me is the sense of wonder that we're able to create in a movie theater.

It's just that joy or trying to show something that people haven't seen before. I think part of his initial inspiration was just the idea of creating a world from whole cloth. You know, I remember after we made Titanic. Background and action! He felt so constrained on that movie by history. We really had to adhere to the geography of the Titanic, the land of the Titanic. I think it really made Jim yearn for a completely different filmmaking experience

where he really could create everything. The Avatar movies create an entire environment, an entire world that we plunge ourselves into. So the question is, where does Cameron come up with these ideas? see you in the sunshine you do get the feeling that this kind of ambition that he has stems from something in his childhood and this insatiable curiosity that he developed from the very beginning i always have this feeling that there's something just beyond the headlights of the sub that's going to reveal itself Brooks comes the perfect holiday movie to see in theaters. I'm a different person. I have never in my life

help this way about any other woman. Jesus! I wasn't counting your mother! Critics declare, it's hilarious, smart, and with Emma Mackey's performance, a star is born. It's complicated when you come from our family. Stop trying to be normal and pick something easy.

Ella McKay, ready, PG-13. The NBA is happening Christmas Day. Five games. one unforgettable lineup. That's what Christmas is all about. Buckets for breakfast, breakaways for dessert. It's the holiday tradition.

Christmas is all day. With star power from across the globe. The stars, they are going to be out. The best gift, you don't even have to unwrap it. We want to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! NBA Christmas Day begins at noon Eastern on ABC and ESPN. If I were asked, To describe Jim in one word, I would describe Jim as an explorer.

He's always looking to venture into the unknown and to explore. He does it in his life, and he does it in his movies. So much of it is about the thrill of discovery for him, both in terms of what he does as a scientist explorer and what he does when he makes his movies. One reinforces the other. The thing that endured from his youth onward was his fascination with the ocean. I remember meeting him saying,

who are guys that you admire. And I expected him to say, filmmakers. And he said, Jacques Cousteau, a lot of astronauts, a lot of explorers. You know, kids nowadays are like Jacques Who. But, you know, at the time, that was a big deal. We hadn't seen sharks like that and octopus like that and whales like that. It was fantastic. It was an alien world right here on Earth.

And I made the Cognin of Leap at the age of 15. That's an alien world. I can go to. I might not ever be on a spaceship, I might not ever be an astronaut, but I can go to that world. Well, I grew up in Niagara Falls with, you know, thundering water in the background of every moment of our lives. That might have, you know, something to do with why I have, you know, water on the brain. So when I was 15, I begged my father to enroll me in a scuba diving class, and I think I was the only kid in the entire city of Niagara Falls that could scuba dive. It wasn't until I moved to the West Coast when I was 17 that I started diving in the Pacific Ocean and that blew my mind to actually see it for real

these animals, these incredible plant forms. And so I just fell deeper and deeper and deeper in love with the ocean. Magnetometer's twitching, but I don't see anything yet. As a filmmaker, it's really the abyss that's a bit. his first foray into making a film that's in the ocean. And that's kind of where it all begins for Jim. When I wrote The Abyss, that put me in contact with a lot of people who are exploring quite deep, like Robert Ballard, who had found the Titanic.

Cameron, like, he obviously sees the cinematic possibilities in Titanic, but it's fascinating that he sort of begins with a conversation with Robert Ballard, who is exploring. the wreck. Titanic was called the ship of dreams. And it was. It really was. Jim visited the Titanic wreck itself at least 33 times. He spent hundreds of hours in the Titanic wreck. Well, when you go to Jim's house, he had a submarine in the driveway that he took to Titanic. And people forget that I left Hollywood for eight years to go explore the deep ocean. If you haven't researched James Cameron's non-film adventures, he has done things that other people, even in the world of science, haven't been able to do. Back in 2012, Cameron is the first ever to make a solo descent to the Mariana Trench.

That's the deepest place in the world's oceans. And, of course, he had specially designed lights and cameras to make a record of it. So even while he's doing things that no human being has ever done alone, he's still thinking of it sometimes as a filmmaker. The guy is a water enthusiast all his life. His expeditions, I mean, his documentary work is about ocean exploration. As the sub dives to 2,500 feet, Zaleca spots something extraordinary.

I'm a goodsy researcher from South Africa, and I'm also a natural explorer. I've been fortunate enough to work closely with James Cameron. Man, it's a heck of a ride. Jim is a vehicle of change. He's a vehicle of creativity. He's using his passions, his creativity, his resources, to make sure that everybody comes along as we discover parts of the ocean that we know less about. Oh, my word.

James Cameron has seen, felt, smelled, and touched an environment deep in the sea that most of us will never be able to do. He finally got to a place in time when it comes to technology and his research where he can finally get to interpret in-performance-performance-capture the element of water. This is a passion of his exploring these uncharted areas of our own world. And then to create them on this distant fictional moon was, I think, incredibly exciting for him. He's as much a scientist as he is a filmmaker, amazingly, and an adventurer. As you see Sigourney Weaver's character, Cudy, sort of explore the world's of the ocean. It's not hard to imagine Jim Cameron doing the same thing as a young person. Kitty also represents something that's very important to Cameron, which is the sense that

creatures are interconnected somehow. We recognize what's beautiful in Pandora because it's enough like our world. You know, a sunset's still a sunset. Water is still beautiful. Surf is still beautiful like it might have been like here on Earth thousands or even millions of years ago. You know, I think Jim is a person who has a real purpose in life. He feels that art should influence life. And when he was conceiving Avatar and Pandora, he saw Pandora as a world that could be a metaphor for the world in which we live. It's about curiosity. It feels like this amazing escape into a magical world. And you know you're in the hands of a master storyteller.

Avatar, it's just a completely different ballgame, especially when you're doing something that is a high-stakes skill like breath-holding. So how does someone like Kate Winslet learn a skill like breath-holding? It was 7.15. Whoa! This is a soundstage here at your sister. This is a soundstage here up. Manhattan Beach Studios.

This is the room you wanted to have when you were a kid, and you got all the cool stuff. And this we've sort of turned into a museum. Get away from her, you bitch. Of all the artifacts and set pieces. Things that we've collected

over the years. Jim Cameron and technology are sort of been extricably linked. He innovates in order to realize the stories that he has in his head. I feel her, dad. When he is pushing technology like he has,

he's pushing it in a significant way. You want to spread your fire. The Avatar films overall mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but I think on a personal level, we see a science. That is so important to me. Maybe human being on Earth could live here without a mask. I'm a meteorologist.

That's my education. There are so many scientists out there that have great ideas and great concepts or great forecasts for the future. But they don't know how to tell that story. James does. What makes Jim's movies sing? The fact that he's completely undaunted by the fact the tool set doesn't exist yet. But he has an idea and he's like, okay, let's make the tool set to make the idea come to life. But get up.

If you look at his career, If you go back to the abyss where they had the pseudopod that came out with Mary Elizabeth's face. The water morphing in the abyss was done by scanning her performance and changing the sculpt of the model, essentially frame by frame, and then using that to drive the shape of the water. Jim already knew what he wanted to do in Terminator 2. And he knew if he didn't crack it for this one scene in the abyss, he could never make Terminator 2.

Get out. There is no film that changed my understanding and obsession with film more than Terminator 2. Asta, baby. That scene where we see the T-1000 explode, and then you see liquid in puddles, and then reform. It was magic, and it made me want more and more and more. Terminator 2 is a massive success. But now he wants to tell one of the most famous stories of all time, which is the sinking of the Titanic.

Background and action. Because it's Jim Cameron, he's going to do it on a scale that no one's ever done it before. When we were doing Titanic and we populated a model ship with people through what we then called motion capture,

that was the evolution that allowed us to transform into performance capture for Avatar. Hey, don't go get it. So it started. from motion capture, where you had marker dots on the body, and you captured the body in any way that the body moved. But then it went to the next level when we created the head rig,

which videos the face. And then that drives a whole chain of events downstream from that that feeds that performance into their CG character. We don't call it motion capture. We call it performance capture. Well, now to an incredible look behind the scenes of Avatar, Fire, and Ash, Ginger, we almost didn't recognize you. You got to go to the studio where they turned you into an avatar?

So we'll capture your face. We'll capture. James Cameron is a wizard, and he does all the magic that changes our lives and changes film forever. Sam's going to enter. And I got to be a part of

and realize how much goes into making a film like Avatar. How's the helmet here? A makeup artist came up and put several dots on my face because the helmet that you wear has a camera directly in front of you,

and that camera is looking at your dots on your face to find every little nuance of its expression. Has this changed since the first film has anything advanced or changed, or is this all pretty similar? In principle, it's almost exactly what we started with on the first avatar, where we pioneered the whole head rig setup. And it wasn't just that James took this seriously. He gave me a full backstory.

He told me what my character would be feeling, what parts of my life I could pull from. We're going to act today. It's a very small part, but, you know, you've got to start somewhere, start small. Got to start small. No pressure. Just James Cameron. It's going to direct me.

It's fine. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No pressure. Tell him what you told me. Yeah, I could. And then as we were in it, I started realizing by take two, take three. So just, just play it like that. Four, five, six.

This was all real for them. He's got an interesting idea. Tell him what you told me. I think it's really critical for people to think. of the CG character creation as a form of makeup. And it's actually a less limited form of makeup.

What is this? Don't know what? And then he brought his real world experience to the water. Come on! And he said, this is what it's really like in the water.

We didn't know if we could do performance capture underwater, but we knew that we had to. The first test, of underwater capture was done in my dad's pool in Sherman Oaks. There were just like four of us setting up little cameras in the pool and just seeing if we can get any data from it. After testing in like a small tank, eventually this huge tank got built.

And that tank, in addition to just allowing the actors to perform, had these big wave movers. You needed to produce a current. There was all kinds of actions that needed to work. Then they couldn't use scuba, otherwise you'd see the bubbles. So instead, they had to learn how to free dive, hold their breath for minutes at a time. It was 7.15. Whoa! It was a pretty, pretty big overall effort.

We put a lot of energy between the first avatar, where we did what we thought of was almost impossible. And then two and three, we spent a lot of time on process. Avatar 3, Fire and Ash, it allowed us a lot of extra bandwidth for creativity because it all flowed very smoothly. But Ava did not come. I was really impressed with how, like, it's both me and not me at the same time, more than I've ever seen in any other part. Because usually I can see myself, but this one you can and you can't.

It's a magical experience. There's an energy about Jim. It's infectious. Again, he's a great leader and team building. I think his movies have always been not only pushing the envelope in a technological way, but they're just very ambitious. And that ambition hasn't slowed down.

It's just got bigger. He's very encouraging in bringing people in to help make these dreams and these ambitions into a reality. And his ambitions, extend to other interests as well, including one you might never suspect. I love imagining him in overalls. Hey guys, this is Coach Glow from Dance Moms. Don't miss season two of Dance Moms in New Era, now streaming on Hulu.

This season, I'm starting a brand new studio. My daughter, Ms. Kaylee, he's going to be here full time. I like save the studio. These moms are like hyenas. You're stupid. Look at you. These clothes have to show up the world that they're. They're back and they're better than ever.

Dance moms and new era season two is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Now streaming. Go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift. Disney Plus invites you to experience a streaming event for the eras. I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect. And we're going to do everything in our power to blow your mind.

Don't miss the exclusive six-episode docu-series. This is the biggest challenge. ever done tonight we complete that challenge the end of an era first two episodes now streaming only on Disney Plus the Navi say that every person is born twice the second time is when you earn your place among the people forever in Avatar there was this universal theme about acceptance a celebration of indigenous people. What New Zealand has for us is a crew and a team of people who are passionate.

This is our family, a small tribe from Chanawa. We're here to surprise Jim and others with the Karakia, with the blessing. And this is what we call Hekoha Aroha. Cliff, who of course is from New Zealand, is very mighty in the role of Tanawari. Doroch Maktoa and his family will stay with us. So this is our gift of love to you all to make something great and something beautiful for the world that we can all be proud of. We welcome you. We're welcome you. He brought in a troop of his people and they did a traditional amount of his people and they did a traditional amount of

blessing for this set, which meant a lot. It's really hard for me to describe just how magical it is and how emotional it is to go on this ride with everybody. That ceremony gave us a feeling of connection to the things that inform our world, kind of an unseen world, that we've lost the connection to. To me, that's the spirit of the film. This is a New Zealand-based film in my heart. New Zealand is my new home. Jim, how he lives his life, being with one with the world around him,

sustainability of the planet. That is something that is synonymous with New Zealand. I love the fact that Jim moved to New Zealand. I think it is its own little bubble and its own little ecosystem. It's far away from Hollywood. I mean, it's pretty nice there, and he's an organic farmer there. He bought all those acres, and he made it a functional gigantic. gigantic farm, an important purveyor of produce.

And all of a sudden, his Jim Cameron. He went from a gentleman farmer to a farmer. I love imagining him in overalls. We're happy to live here. We want to be good and responsible, New Zealanders. Jim and his wife, actress Susie Amos Cameron, moved with their children to New Zealand in 2012. We don't take anything for granted.

We don't live like you think we do. How do you think people think you live? Oh, palacially. You know? You don't have a butler? No? No. Do your own dishes?

Yes. Well, I try to avoid it. He's definitely committed to that lifestyle. He could live any way he wants. But he definitely, he lives and breathes this. Jim is plant-based. That's what he is, so the catering is plant-based. It was all vegan.

I do believe there was just. a guerrilla movement that included like tacos and barbecue. But there's no restrictions. If you want to go and get a hot dog, go down the road. It's not just about having a vegan meal on set. This is about changing the world. He goes bigger in everything he does, as we know from his films. Clearly, the movie deals with what we're doing to our planet,

but Jim does it in a way that isn't, it isn't preachy. It's this unconscious kind of reawakening. Avatar opened and closed with the same image. Jake Sully opening his eyes. And it's open your eyes not only to other cultures, but open your eyes to the relationship we have with the planet. Avatar is heavily influenced by indigenous cultures. Afterwards, I got approached by indigenous leaders from all over the world saying,

hey, you're talking about our plight. So that took me on its own whole separate journey. I went down to the Amazon with Jim to attend the meetings of the chiefs to try to stop one of these dams going up on a tributary which would have displaced a whole group of people. They saw Avatar as something that woke the world up to their problems. The plight of indigenous people everywhere is the same. They're losing their habitat.

They're losing their culture. There was a lot of inspiration. from Polynesian culture, my culture. Traditionally, we lived alongside nature. Humanity's losing its memory of how to live in harmony with nature. We're still struggling to understand the natural world even as we're destroying it.

I wrote it in to the new Avatar films and it becomes quite prominent in Fire and Ash. Your goddess has no dominion here. Fire and Ash gets wonderfully complex. Different cultures and different flavors of Navi that we have. It's about the connection and the relationship with nature and life, actually.

My grandmother, her blood is Mapuche and Aymara. Mapuche literally means person of the earth. And so I was like, oh, I can do that. I can try and learn how to be a person of the earth. And I think that is something that Avatar really taps into. And I feel like that's a really beautiful source of inspiration for us all. Okay?

I think it's important for films to examine real issues, real terrestrial issues, you know, earthbound issues and get into that and show the compassion and the humanity. Those of us, I think, that can cultivate that empathy will be the ones that are the hope of the future. You can see Cameron looking into the future to have a song by a major artist at the end. It reflects the themes of the film. We all think of my heart will go on as being a fundamental part of the success of Titanic. I didn't want to keep chasing the phantom of that.

Now another A-List artist is stepping up. He actually did let me know. He needed something and he called. I came back to doing another Avatar film because I love the kind of family team team experience. experience of it. I think people come to work on a Jim Cameron film. They know they're going to be challenged. And they want that.

They come to these movies for that experience. As someone who's done this for 40 years, I think he's found his people. Oh, hey. It's the people that have worked together since 2005, so we're 20 years into this thing. That works better. So he knows everybody else's job.

Everybody else's job on a film set probably better than them. And so I think the great thing about Jim is he allows this troop to embrace each other. For this, it'll be fine. We'll see the heavier action scenes. I'm very family-oriented and just walking into that set and feeling that energy of family that is real. You can't fake that. Exactly. He's had also crew members that have been with him since Titanic.

It's because we're definitely getting something out of it all that keeps us wanting to come back for more. Kate Winslet famously made her return to a Jim Cameron set when Way of Water and Fire and Ash were filming simultaneously. And that's a reunion more than 20 years in the making. It was really moving, actually. It's like watching an old friend or a relative, like just really happy and stepping into their own.

And it was just amazing to see, Now you must stand with us. I didn't come back for more fame, glory, or money. That's just not even how I process things. But I did come back because of the joy that we have working together. And he himself will say, when I wrote Avatar for the first time, I was a young guy doing all kinds of crazy things. Now that I'm making these Avatar movies, I'm a father.

And I come at these things with a different perspective. They always say, right what you know. So I've been on both sides of the coin. I've been a teen who was not understood by an authoritarian father. You know, great, great guy, took care of business, roof over the head, all that sort of thing. But he didn't get me. So there was a lot of tension around that for me. And so I lived that.

Sir, I take full responsibility. Yeah, you do. That's right. Because you do older brother, you gotta act like it. I think being a father, I think being a father has changed him and changes everybody who's a parent. And though there's huge spectacle, dazzling creatures and characters and environments, it's all rooted in character.

And it's very personal. He just wanted to create a family saga. He's a great friend, very loyal friend. I really do trust him. I think if I was really in trouble, I'd call him. Jim. Jim is my brother, and we are as close as to people can be without having blood relation. My dad was kidnapped in 98, and he was kept for 72 days, and the first phone call I made was to Jim.

I mean, Jim knows everything about everything. And I said, I don't know what to do. They're asking for all this money, and he said, well, I'm going to hire a negotiator. a negotiator and I'll send him your way and he had a negotiator with us in 48 hours and that's what he did but at that dire moment where we had no money no knowledge of anything he did that and my dad was freed so he's stick together someone else who was close to Cameron a member of the avatar family producer john landau when john landau passed a earlier during the production of Fire and Ash,

it was a challenging time for everybody. We lost our beloved producer, John. He and I had worked together for 32 years in the middle of making a film about grief and loss. Widely respected throughout the industry, Landau and Cameron accepted the Best Picture Oscar for Titanic at the Oscars at 98. I can't act and I can't compose and I can't do visual effects.

visual effects, so I guess that's why I'm producing. We're a little bit like an old married couple. We know how to avoid fighting. We know how to divide and conquer and compliment each other. And it was an unfortunate, horrible coincidence. But something beautiful emerged from it, which is there was such a culture. I kind of promoted from within, and everybody just picked up the extra slack. John was my best friend.

And I was able to jump in and help deliver what is, you know, sadly his last movie, but I think he'd be very, very proud of it. His son, Jamie Landau, has been part of the movies of Jim Cameron ever since he was a kid, and he turned up in Titanic. And he's had more and more responsibilities on the Avatar movies ever since. It certainly made my grieving process easier because I was surrounded by a different type of family. I guess that's what the whole movie is, kind of springboarding off.

Is this idea of how you get through grief and pain and hurt and keep pushing forward in the world. There's another thread from Titanic that maybe seems to crop up in fire and ash. And that's the power of the song over the credits. I just wanted the song to feel like a deep exhale, like a relief, like we've made it. My name is Percy Jackson.

Getting in trouble is like breathing for me. The hit series returns to Disney Plus and Hulu. The danger the camp is under is greater than you can possibly imagine. For the key to our survival, three of you must quest. To the sea of monsters. Let's go do the impossible. I'm not going to let some stupid monsters stand in my way. Percy Jackson and the Olympians, new season now on Disney Plus and Hulu.

Ritted TV, PGV. Fire is the only pure thing in this world. On December 19th, the world of Avatar will change forever. There's something you're hiding. Tell her, it is time. From director James Cameron. This world goes much deeper than you imagine. Get tickets now.

Movies don't get any bigger than this. The day is calm. Avatar, Fire and Dash. rated PG-13. Maybe inappropriate for children under 13. Get tickets now. Tonight in Hollywood, the world premiere of Avatar, Fire and Act. You can tell from the scale of this premiere, it's just larger than life.

And then to have a song that we close on that's intimate, that's deeply personal, it's also very emotional at the same time. But how pop superstar Miley Cyrus came to write and record an original song for this third Avatar is kind of a story in itself. Well, there was a big debate of whether we should have a song or not. Obviously, the stellar example was Titanic, with My Heart will go on. I didn't want to keep chasing the phantom of that, you know, and I thought, all right, if we can find the right artist

and there's some kind of synchronicity, then we'll pursue it. And somebody suggested Miley. I had met her just recently at the Disney Legends event. If I'm backstage with someone like James Cameron, I'm always going to drop off. If you ever need anything, let me know. And he actually did let me know. He needed something, and he called.

So I called her up and I said, hey, we're legends in law, you know. Do you want to talk about doing a song for this little movie we're making? It can be intimidating when you're stepping into the world of Avatar because it's just such a... phenomenon. So she screened the film and she related to the loss part of it because she had lost her house in the Woolsey Fire. The state of emergency has now been

declared in California. It is unimaginable. So she saw fire representing loss and trial is very traumatic for her to lose all her possessions. I just wanted the song to feel like a deep exhale, like a relief. Like we've made it because of my own, everything burning down and then rebuilding by picking every piece by Bick of what is still meaningful and what matters. One of the first lyrics in Dream is one is like a diamond in the dark. Our love will never fade away where diamonds in the dark. When I lost my home, I went back to see if anything had survived and underneath all the ash,

I just saw a little sparkling stone. and it was a diamond from a piece of jewelry. And something like a diamond that's beautiful, but it's strong, and so it can withstand that kind of heat. That's how diamonds are created. And sometimes that's what it takes to create something beautiful. What I love about working with James Cameron is he is emotion-driven. That's the foundation that Avatar is built on.

Of course, anywhere Avatar takes me, I'm going. My goal is to just enhance the film and the fans. Every time we dream, we're going. dream as one. If this film is reasonably successful and we get to go on, I always say if, it's very important to keep that in mind. It's not a done deal.

There's something you're hiding. Tell me the truth. To make four and five, then the story picks up years later. It'll all work out perfectly. I'm down lower than her. I'm a lover of happy endings, hard-earned. You know, but the hard-earned part is the challenging

part. I'm very cognizant of the fact that I'm 71 and I won't be able to do this indefinitely. And yet I'm still as excited as I ever was creatively. So I'm going to pick my battles carefully and they're going to be based on what could do the most good. Thank you.