Zoe Saldaña Shows Off ‘Avatar: Fire And Ash’ At Disney’s CinemaCon​on April 3, 2025 at 11:11 pm

The box office year has been sluggish, but if one movie is going to bring the industry back alive it’s James Cameron‘s Avatar: Fire and Ash on December 19.

Disney showed a quick piece of footage of the third Avatar installment Thursday at CinemaCon, meant to gives us a taste of the new peaceful wind-traders, who are allies to the Na’vi and the punk-rock (for lack of a better word) Ash people with red-tainted locks and their four-winged flying beasts. We see Jake Sully and his family finding voyage on the wind-traders’ squid-looking balloon flying ships. The whole posse soon finds itself under attack by the Ash people, one of their key people being a queen or princess with a glamorous red head-dress. We also see Spider along the ride with Jake and Neytiri.

In a taped message before Zoe Saldaña took the stage at the Las Vegas confab, Cameron said “I’m in New Zealand finishing up Avatar: Fire and Ash. I think we can agree that’s a good use of my time since this sucker’s coming at us like a freight train.”

“I’m sending you a reel to give a taste of the spectacle… And the increased emotional heart and soul,” he continued.

“The Sully family are really put through the ringer on this one” as they face “not only the human invaders, but new adversaries, the Ash People,” added the Oscar-winning Titanic director.

“I hope this film can provide a shot in the arm of theater owners because we are still struggling with the one-two punch of the pandemic and streaming.”

While the title reveal and treatment was dropped during last summer’s D23, this is the first time we’ve actually seen footage of the villainous fiery alien tribe that inhabits the same world as the Na’vi.

“New cultures and settings … you’ll see more of Pandora the planet than you ever see saw before. The new film isn’t what you expect, but it’s definitely what you want,” Cameron said back at D23 about the latest franchise installment he’s been working on for several years.

Through two movies, the Avatar movies counts $5.24 billion at the global box office and four Oscar wins.