James Cameron’s long-standing idea may finally come to fruition. The acclaimed filmmaker and current box office darling recently informed the Los Angeles Times that he still plans to create a film based on Charles R. Pellegrino’s 2010 book The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back. To be sure, Cameron voiced his desire to make the contentious item into a feature when it was initially published. He and Pellegrino had also met Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the book’s main character, a month before his death in 2010.
Yamaguchi, a naval engineer, amazingly escaped the World War II atomic explosions of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Unfortunately, the picture has been blocked over time, but The Terminator director has not given up on it. James Cameron, who has a net worth of $720 million, recently told the Los Angeles Times that he still intends to create a film on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“Would be as relevant as ever,” says James Cameron of his upcoming Hiroshima film.
Cameron confessed to Jordan Riefe of the Los Angeles Times that a Hiroshima film based on The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back is still his dream project, even after more than a decade after the book’s publication. He explained why the film would be relevant in today’s circumstances by referring to the Ukraine-Russia conflict and surging nationalism. Cameron said, ”
“We live in a more dangerous world than we believed… I believe the Hiroshima picture would be just as pertinent, if not more so. It serves as a reminder of what these weapons are capable of when employed on human beings.”
A Hiroshima film, admittedly, is consistent with James Cameron’s cinematic approaches and aesthetics. Virtually all of Cameron’s films show the ongoing conflict between nature, humans, and intelligent robots, as well as corporate and wealthy avarice, with strong female characters and romance subplots propelling the story along.
This may be the topic of the director’s large project once it gets going.
But, the Canadian director will not be able to document the Hiroshima-Nagasaki explosions anytime soon since he is presently working on Avatar 3, the third installment in the critically and financially successful trilogy. Avatar: The Way of Water, the second installment, is now a movie office hit. The film, directed by James Cameron, has grossed $2.245 billion (and is climbing) on a budget of $350-460 million. His Titanic also made a lot of money when it was re-released on February 10, 2023.
For the time being, if you want to brush up on your Hiroshima-Nagasaki knowledge, head to Netflix or other platforms to watch some of the best movies/documentaries made about the disaster, including White Light, Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2007), Greatest Events of WWII in Color (2019), and Fat Man and Little Boy (1989), among others.
