While filmmaker James Cameron has two more “Avatar” films on his schedule to direct in the next few years, one other film not related to that franchise remains on his radar – “Ghosts of Hiroshima”.
Cameron plans to use Charles Pellegrino’s new non-fiction book, releasing tomorrow on the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb in 1945, as the basis for a film of the same name and will mark his first non-Avatar directorial effort since 1997’s “Titanic”.
It focuses on Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a Japanese man who survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima, got on a train to Nagasaki, and then survived the bombing of that city. Cameron previously indicated he will shoot the film as soon as his “Avatar” production schedule permits – most likely after “Avatar: Fire and Ash” releases.
In a new interview with Discussing Film, Cameron confirms a script has not yet been finished and he believes this could well be the most difficult film to make of his career:
“This might be the most challenging film I ever make. I don’t 100% have my strategy fully in place [right now] for how I want to see it, for how I want to shield people from the horror, but still be honest. Also, for how I can find some kind of poetry, beauty, or spiritual epiphany in it somehow, which I know must be there. It’s there in every human story. So, it’s going to be very challenging. I might not even be up to the task, but that never stopped me before.”
Cameron also has cites “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan” as two of his inspirations for capturing ‘unsparing’ wartime tragedy in “Ghosts of Hiroshima”.
