Acclaimed director James Cameron has rather passionately shot down the idea of a supposed nine-hour Avatar 3 cut.
While speaking to Temple of Geek at the Saturn Awards, Cameron decided to dispel the rumors of a nine-hour rough cut of the third Avatar movie. The filmmaker cut right to the chase and explained that he had nine hours of material for the next three movies — not for just one of them.
“By the way, can I just shoot something down right now that has been propagated,” Cameron asked the interviewer. “There is no nine-hour rough cut [of Avatar 3] … I would put a shotgun in my mouth if I ever did a nine-hour rough cut. No, what I said was its nine hours of material, meaning Avatar 3, Avatar 4, and Avatar 5 — that’s, you know, three hours a movie. Somehow that turned into a nine-hour — can you imagine?”
You can view the whole video below:
What was the nine-hour Avatar 3 cut rumor?
The rumors of a nine-hour rough cut of Avatar 3 began early last year, where a report suggested that there were nine hours of footage for the third Avatar movie that could be released as a limited series on Disney+. As Cameron himself has clarified, however, this did not turn out to be the case.
