James Cameron‘s post-Avatar plans keep getting bigger. After purchasing the rights to adapt Charles Pellegrino‘s 2015 novel Last Train From Hiroshima, Cameron snapped up the right to the follow-up book Ghosts of Hiroshima. Cameron says he plans to combine both novels for a film he’ll shoot as soon as his Avatar production schedule allows. The Hiroshima project marks Cameron’s first non-Avatar film project since 1997’s Titanic. Cameron still plans to call his forthcoming film Last Train From Hiroshima.
According to Deadline‘s exclusive report, Cameron’s Last Train From Hiroshima film focuses on the actual story of a Japanese man during World War II who survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima, got on a train to Nagasaki, and survived the nuclear explosion in that city. Wow! What are the odds?
Deadline says Pellegrino’s books take inspiration from the voices of bomb survivors and the new science of Forensic archaeology. Pellegrino digs into the events and aftermath of two days in August 1945, when nuclear devices detonated over Japan changed history, scarring the world forever with memories of tragedy, hubris, and cruelty. The books cite eyewitness accounts of those who experienced the explosions, the civilians on the ground, and the American flyboys. History suggests the bombs killed an estimated 150,000 and 246,000 people.
“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,” Cameron told Deadline. “I met Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just days before he died. 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.” While visiting Yamaguchi, Cameron and Pellegrino pledged to “pass on his unique and harrowing experience to future generations.”
Cameron takes on immense responsibility by vowing to tell Tsutomu Yamaguchi’s story and honor those whose lives were lost or forever altered by the tragic events. Considering Cameron’s care for his projects, I feel Yamaguchi’s story is in great hands. Regarding when he’ll get the chance to film Last Train From Hiroshima is anyone’s guess, knowing how long it takes to complete chapters of the Avatar series.