James Cameron returns to cinema based on real events: "I have always wanted to make a film about Hiroshima"

James Cameron has bought the adaptation rights of the book Los fantasmas de Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino before its publication to bring it to the big screen, along with material from the author's 2005 book,  Last Train From Hiroshima (The Last Train from Hiroshima), which is the chosen title for the film. 

This has been confirmed by Deadline, in a news where it was also announced that the project will move forward when "the 'Avatar' schedule allows for it". This would be Cameron's first movie outside of the Pandora universe since winning 11 Oscars with Titanic. 

With this project set in World War II, Cameron will once again approach a story based on real events, which he will adapt faithfully and "without concessions," as he declared to Deadline.

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The film focuses in part on the real story of a Japanese man who survived the atomic explosion in Hiroshima, boarded a train to Nagasaki, and survived the nuclear explosion in that city.

Pellegrino's two books are based on the accounts of bomb survivors and the new science of forensic archaeology. Pellegrino details the events and aftermath of two days in August 1945, when nuclear devices detonated over Japan forever changed life on Earth.

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The narrative core of both books is the testimonials of eyewitnesses to the atomic explosions: the Japanese civilians on the ground and the American pilots in the air. It's estimated that the bombs killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people.

"It's a subject I've always wanted to make a film about, that I've been fighting for for years," Cameron stated to Deadline. "I met Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivor, a few days before his death. He was in the hospital. He was passing on to us the torch of his personal story, so I have to do it. I can't turn my back on it."

Charles Pellegrino, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, and James Cameron Hideo Nakamura via Deadline

During his visit with Yamaguchi, Cameron and Pellegrino committed to "passing on his unique and heartbreaking experience to future generations."

Blackstone Publishing will release Ghosts of Hiroshima in the United States in August of next year, the 80th anniversary of the atomic bomb's dropping. 

Shane Salerno, who co-wrote with Cameron on Avatar: The Shape of Water along with Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver, as well as on the upcoming sequels, has closed the deal for the publication of Cameron's project. Pellegrino, author of over 30 books, including the two being adapted in this new project, was Cameron's scientific advisor on Titanic and Avatar.

*This article has been automatically translated using artificial intelligence