James Cameron to Direct Film Adaptation of Acclaimed WWII Book

James Cameron has his hands full with his blockbuster Avatar franchise at the moment, but the acclaimed Canadian director has already set his next project.

According to Deadline , Cameron has purchased the film rights to the forthcoming book Ghosts of Hiroshima , the sequel to the 2010 historical book The Last Train From Hiroshima , which Cameron first optioned back in 2010. It's been a passion project of Cameron's for some time, though he's been busy in recent years with the continuations of his Avatar series with 2022's Avatar: The Way of Water and 2025's Avatar: Fire and Ash .

The movie, like the book, will partially follow the true story of then-29-year-old Tsutomu Yamaguchi, regarded as the only person who survived both atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. He was on a business trip in Hiroshima when the U.S. bombed the city; he returned by train to Nagasaki the following day and survived the bombing there just a few days later.

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Cameron himself is thrilled about bringing the project to life. "It’s a subject that I’ve wanted to do a film about, that I’ve been wrestling with how to do it, over the years," the director told Deadline .

"I met Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just days before he died [in 2010]," he continued. "He was in the hospital. He was handing the baton of his personal story to us, so I have to do it. I can’t turn away from it." In that hospital visit, Cameron and book author Charles Pellegrino promised Yamaguchi they would "pass on his unique and harrowing experience to future generations."

Cameron's next film, Avatar: Fire and Ash , arrives in theaters Dec. 19, 2025.