But he reveals that the project did get delayed for four months due to the pandemic, so they have had to push two of the scheduled four sequels around a full calendar year into 2022.

"But that's probably a good thing in the grand scheme of things, because we need to have everybody back in cinemas worldwide," he says.

Over the past year, the world's cinemas have collectively suffered. However, despite battling an industrial slowdown caused by the pandemic, Cameron says that he believes the charm of the big screen will not fade.

"I think everyone who is a filmmaker, whether they're like me and they're kind of an old dinosaur, or whether they're a new filmmaker that's coming up, they have to ask themselves: 'what is a movie?' Why should something be a movie and not a six-hour limited series, an episodic series or a special-or any of the various ways that things can play through with online streaming," he says.

"I don't know how it's all going to settle, but I do believe the cinema will always be there, because there's something the cinema provides that streaming platforms can't. Going to the theater is about being in a room with a bunch of strangers.

"The strangers keep you from talking to your friends while you're watching. You don't have a remote, so you can't press pause and go order a pizza or go to the bathroom. It's great when you laugh at a joke with everybody else in the room and you don't know them," Cameron continues.

After all, just like all the great directors who have been asked this question amid the double blows of the pandemic and the rise of rival streaming services, Cameron believes cinema is irreplaceable.

"As a filmmaker, what we learned about humanity in the very challenging last year is that human beings need three things to survive-food, water and stories," he says.

With Avatar-which despite being 11 years old, took less than 48 hours to top the Chinese box-office chart again-the filmmaker, who once loudly shouted "I'm the king of the world" while accepting one of Titanic's 11 Oscars in 1998, might probably be the last person to worry about unemployment.

"As a storyteller, I will always have a job," concludes Cameron.