Michelle Yeoh won't appear until Avatar 4, James Cameron confirms (exclusive)

Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh's arrival in the Avatar movies will happen later than expected.

A photo of the Everything Everywhere All at Once star on the set of the new Avatar movies seemed to suggest the actress would appear in the third entry, officially titled Avatar: Fire and Ash. However, director and writer James Cameron now confirms in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, conducted at Disney's D23 fan convention in Anaheim, Calif., that Yeoh's character won't appear until the untitled Avatar 4.

"Michelle Yeoh won't be in 3. She's in 4 and 5," Cameron tells EW beside stars Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña. "So that got a little bit misreported. She will be coming in soon to do her part, which is an interesting, fun character. I mean, we're getting ahead of ourselves now. This whole thing has been planned for years and years. The scripts were all written years ago, through the end of movie 5. So we've been working on parts of 4 even as we go along, mostly because we've got this young cast. We had to shoot them all while they were still young."

"We love Michelle," the director added. "She was always a movie star, but she's blown up into a huge, huge phenomenon. I look forward to working there."

Disney announced Yeoh in the role of Dr. Karina Mogue in the Avatar franchise back in 2019. The late producer Jon Landau shared a photo of the actress on set with Cameron a couple of years later in March 2021. According to the caption, the snapshot was taken "between set-ups while filming Avatar 3."

Cameron and Landau shot the entirety of Avatar: The Way of Water, Avatar: Fire and Ash, and the first act of the franchise's fourth entry in the same go in New Zealand to avoid their young actors growing up too fast for their characters on screen.

Yeoh, soon to be seen this year in Universal's Wicked movie and the Star Trek: Section 31 film on Paramount+, sported a white zip-up and performed casual martial arts moves in a play fight with Cameron for the shot. Spotted close to her was actor Giovanni Ribisi, who plays Parker Selfridge, the head administrator of the RDA on the planet Pandora.

The actress did confirm to EW in a 2022 interview that she "shot for a few weeks" in 2021 and "was so impressed with the work" Cameron did. "He's a genius; he's a walking genius," she said at the time. "And I really really enjoyed the experience, and I can't wait to go back soon, I hope."

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Avatar: Fire and Ash is currently set to open in theaters on Dec. 19, 2025, followed by Avatar 4 on Dec. 21, 2029, and Avatar 5 on Dec. 19, 2031. On stage at D23, Cameron teased the next-in-line third entry: "The characters are so alive, and it feels so real. It's also got very high emotional stakes — more than ever before. We’re going into really challenging territory for all the characters you know and love."

He added, "The new film is not what you expect, but it’s definitely what you want."

As the filmmakers previously promised, each sequel will introduce a new biome of Pandora. The first Avatar welcomed Worthington's Jake Sully into the jungle-dwelling Omatikaya Clan of Na'vi, while Avatar: The Way of Water gave audiences an inside look at the Metkayina, water-adept Na'vi with webbed features and fin-like tails.

Game of Thrones alumni Oona Chaplin will now enter the fold in Avatar: Fire and Ash to play Varang, the leader of the Ash People, described as an aggressive, volcanic race of Na'vi.

"There are good humans, and there are bad humans. It's the same thing on the Na'vi side," Landau previously teased of the Ash People. "Oftentimes, people don't see themselves as bad. What is the root cause of how they evolve into what we perceive as bad? Maybe there are other factors there that we aren't aware of."

—With additional reporting by Sydney Bucksbaum.