JAMES Cameron has spent so long steering Avatar that it can feel less like a film series and more like a private planet with a very famous human at the controls. Now, he’s hinting he might finally be ready to let someone else take the wheel.

In a new interview with Denise Donlon for Canada’s governor general’s performing arts awards, Cameron said there’s been “momentum in the Avatar universe for 21 years” because development began in 2005. He described the run as “kind of an unbroken continuum” — and framed the moment as one of reckoning, looking at the landscape and weighing “what are the other stories I want to tell”.

Crucially, he’s not talking about walking away from the world entirely. Cameron explicitly raised the idea of deciding “how many of them do I need to direct myself versus writing and/or producing with other film-makers”. That’s a very Cameron way of putting it: even his potential exit from the director’s chair sounds like a careful, controlled handover rather than a dramatic flounce.

It’s hard to overstate how thoroughly he’s stamped himself onto this franchise. He directed what’s been described as the highest-grossing film trilogy of all time, and he’s spent more than two decades pushing technology, studio power and vast budgets — including underwater motion capture — to get Avatar onto screens in the exact form he wants.

That control helped define an era of blockbuster cinema. Cameron’s success made it difficult in the early 2010s to avoid 3D screenings, complete with plastic glasses and the familiar sensation of objects being tossed towards the audience for sheer spectacle.

Whether he does relinquish control remains to be seen, but even the possibility is a jolt. Avatar has been an “unbroken continuum” for so long that a new director wouldn’t just change the visual choices — they could change the energy of the entire machine. Sometimes a world this established doesn’t need another revolution; it needs a fresh set of hands brave enough to do something other than repeat the formula that built it.