Although he remains committed to moving forward with his post-WWII epic “Ghosts of Hiroshima,” which has been intended to be his next project outside the ‘Avatar’ universe, James Cameron is now setting his sights in adapting another book as a film.
The director, already mulling over ‘Hiroshima,’ a new ‘Terminator’ script, and an Avatar-related animated anthology, recently scooped up the rights to Joe Abercrombie’s freshly released fantasy novel “The Devils,” which has rocketed to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
And no, Cameron isn’t just producing. He wants to adapt it himself. He’ll write the script, possibly direct. Why now? Why this? According to Cameron, it wasn’t a calculated career move — it was more about how much fun it would be to make this movie.
“It’s nuts. The whole thing is off its tits,” he tells Empire about Abercrombie’s novel. He’s right, the plot is bananas, involving monks, immortal knights, werewolves, elves, pirates, vampires, and necromancers.
“The Devils” is a fantasy novel set in a gritty, war-torn world filled with dark magic, political intrigue, and brutal conflict. It follows a condemned man, a disgraced and cunning former general who is plucked from death row to lead a desperate mission. His task: to command a misfit band of criminals, heretics, and outcasts—known as “the Devils”—on a near-suicidal quest to turn the tide of a war humanity is losing against monstrous foes.
Cameron says he was reading the novel aloud to his wife Suzy when the realization hit: “I like this book so much, I should just buy it.”
What’s notable is the tonal pivot this would mark for Cameron. Unlike “Avatar,” or the somber history of his planned “Ghosts of Hiroshima,” The Devils sounds like pure chaotic fun.
“It doesn’t have the kind of conscience that Avatar does,” he admits. “But I don’t know if that’s a bad thing… ‘Hiroshima’ is a movie you do because you have to. “The Devils” is a movie you do for fun.”
At 70, Cameron’s instincts haven’t dulled. He still knows when to go big. However, whether “The Devils” gets made is a whole other thing. As mentioned, Cameron still has to complete Avatar 4 and Avatar 5, plus ‘Hiroshima’ seems to be a priority since he promised a Japanese survivor of the blast, on his death bed, no less, that he would make the film. Where does that exactly leave the Abercrombie adaptation?