It is Monday, November 24th. There are a handful of upper, upper echelon filmmakers in Hollywood.

You know their names. I don't need to list them. And then there is James Cameron.

Avatar is still the highest grossing movie of all time at $2.9 billion. And with its

2022 sequel in Titanic, Cameron has made three of the top five films of all time.

He doesn't make movies that often, but when he does, he's made some all-time classics

like Terminator, Terminator 2, Aliens, The Abyss, you know what he's made.

At the same time, he's become a technologist, an undersea explorer, an environmental activist,

and a filmmaker who, despite all his technological chops, including inventing

a lot of the technology he uses on the Avatar movies, he still grounds them in human performances.

It annoys him, and rightly so, when people refer to Avatar and his motion capture technique as

purely visual or CGI or animation or even AI, though he has a lot of thoughts on AI. And now he's back with Avatar Fire and Ash, which he delivered to Disney just about a week ago. I saw it, and of course I wanted to talk to Cameron before he starts his big press tour. So Craig and I went down to Avatar U.S. headquarters in Manhattan Beach last week and got him on the town early. We talked about a lot.

His exacting filmmaking process, how he works with actors, the cost of the avatar machine.

I believe he used the term fuck ton of money, why he's letting the audience under the hood for this

one. Plus his fears for the state of Hollywood and the world and the future of the kind of movies

he likes to make, even his friendship with Elon Musk. You may have discussed alien life forms a bit. I definitely told him to his face that he's famously difficult. And he talked about why he thinks David Ellison is the right buyer for Warner Brothers and why he's not a fan of Netflix, really not a fan. For a guest this big, we had to do a two-parter, a special treat for Thanksgiving,

plus a lightning round, and a good one. Today, it's James Cameron, the king of the world.

From the ringer and puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is the town.

All right, we are here with James Cameron, filmmaker, environmentalist, technologist.

Am I missing anything? International Man of Mystery?

Underwater Explorer?

I got to admit, I'm a little intimidated.

I don't get intimidated often with guests, but I've got the literal king of the world here.

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