Director James Cameron's current cut of Avatar 3 is nine hours long, if a new rumor is to be believed.

The rumor comes courtesy of industry insider Jeff Sneider, who discussed the third Avatar installment's progress during an episode of the Hot Mic podcast. "Someone reached out [to me] and said Cameron handed in a cut of Avatar 3 last week," he said. "The cut was, no joke, 9 hours long. And apparently, he's insisting on doing the [visual effects] for this cut, so that all 9 hours get fully VFX'd, then he'll cut it down. Rather than figuring out what he wants and having them just do the VFX for that. That's what I heard." Neither 20th Century Studios nor Lightstorm Entertainment have publicly commented on Avatar 3's status, which means that Sneider's remarks should be taken with a grain of salt for now.

Related: Avatar: The Way of Water's Impressive Opening Weekend Take Was Mostly 3D Sales

Avatar 3 is scheduled to premiere in December 2024, two years after the release of its direct predecessor Avatar: The Way of Water. Should Cameron hit this distribution date, it will mark a significant step forward for a franchise that has historically been slow at turning around sequels. The Way of Water arrived 13 years after the original Avatar movie, something Cameron chalked up to a number of factors. They included the years he spent on deep-sea expeditions, as well as the time needed to write and design all four planned Avatar sequels simultaneously. Cameron added that his decision to "front-load" the filmmaking progress would ensure that Avatar 3, 4 and 5 all hit cinemas "two or three years apart."

James Cameron Talks Avatar 3, 4 and 5

The Oscar-winning filmmaker previously hinted that the writing stage was among the slowest parts of the Avatar sequels' shared development cycle, and nearly resulted in a mass firing. "I put together a group of writers and said, 'I don't want to hear anybody's new ideas or anyone's pitches until we have spent some time figuring out what worked on the first film, what connected, and why it worked,'" Cameron said. "They kept wanting to talk about the new stories. I said, 'We aren’t doing that yet.' Eventually, I had to threaten to fire them all because they were doing what writers do, which is to try and create new stories. I said, 'We need to understand what the connection was and protect it, protect that ember and that flame.'"

Related: Avatar 2's Opening Weekend Earns James Cameron a New Career-Best

Despite the considerable energy Cameron has devoted to the Avatar sequels, he noted in a recent interview that there's no guarantee he'll finish them all. According to Cameron, the franchise could wrap up with Avatar 3, should Avatar: The Way of Water not perform well enough at the box office.

Avatar 3 is slated to premiere on Dec. 20, 2024.

Source: The Hot Mic, via YouTube