James Cameron on why he had to adapt Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils: “The whole thing is off its tits”

James Cameron has a lot on his plate, and beyond the ever-expanding Avatar saga, he’s also developing Ghosts of Hiroshima and recently acquired the rights to Joe Abercrombie’s fantasy novel The Devils. Cameron plans to co-write the screenplay with Abercrombie himself once he’s finished on Avatar: Fire and Ash, and he told Empire why this particular project was simply too good to pass up.

“It’s nuts. The whole thing is off its tits,” Cameron said. “I was literally reading parts of the book out loud to my wife Suzy. And it dawned on me: ‘I like this book so much, I should just buy it.’“

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The novel follows a notorious band of anti-heroes, which includes a monk, a cursed knight, a pirate, a werewolf, a vampire, a magician, and an elf, on a delightfully bloody and raucous journey. “Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him,” reads the description. “But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends. Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it’s a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.“

The Devils is different from anything Cameron has done before, and that’s part of the appeal. “It doesn’t have the kind of conscience that Avatar does, but I don’t know if that’s a bad thing,” he said. “[Hiroshima] is a movie you do because you have to. The Devils is a movie you do for fun.“

The first trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash was released yesterday. The sequel follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) as they confront a formidable new enemy, the Ash People, led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). The film is currently set for a December 19 release, and will be followed by Avatar 4 on December 21, 2029, and Avatar 5 on December 18, 2031. Cameron is also considering a potential animated anthology series, but that’s still in the early stages.

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