James Cameron Gives Hiroshima Movie Update, Buys Rights to Second Book

James Cameron is planning to make a Last Train From Hiroshima movie.

While Cameron is busy working on a handful of Avatar sequels, the Terminator director has also previously discussed wanting to turn the 2015 Charles Pellegrino novel, Last Train From Hiroshima, into a feature film.

Cameron optioned the rights to make a movie based on the book over 10 years ago. Now, per Deadline, Cameron has purchased the rights to Pellegrino’s forthcoming book Ghost of Hiroshima, which will be published in 2025 from Blackstone Publishing, as well.

According to Deadline, Cameron plans to adapt both novels into one “uncompromising theatrical film” that “he will shoot as soon as Avatar production permits.” The movie will be called Last Train From Hiroshima.

What else do we know about James Cameron’s Hiroshima movie?

“The film focuses in part on the true story of a Japanese man during World War II who survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima, got on a train to Nagasaki, and then survived the nuclear explosion in that city,” Deadline’s description of the movie reads.

Cameron said of the project, “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. 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.”

Blackstone Publishing CEO Josh Stanton added, “[Everyone] is thrilled and honored to be the publisher of Ghosts of Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino, which will serve as part of the source material for James Cameron’s epic motion picture.”

Last Train From Hiroshima will be Cameron’s first non-Avatar movie since 1997’s Titanic. He’s also known for making 1982’s Piranha II: The Spawning, 1984’s The Terminator, 1986’s Aliens, 1989’s The Abyss, 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and 1994’s True Lies.