According to director James Cameron, actor Michelle Yeoh will not be in Avatar: Fire and Ash. 

“Michelle Yeoh won’t be in 3. She’s in 4 and 5,” Cameron said according to Deadline. “So that got a little bit misreported. She will be coming in soon to do her part, which is an interesting, fun character.” 

Many had expected Yeoh to be in the third installment after Disney announced Yeoh’s role as Dr. Karina Mogue according to Deadline, but moviegoers will have to wait until the fourth installment. Cameron admitted to being excited to work with the recent acting phenomenon but is also excited to share the characters and the high-stakes storyline of the third installment according to the announcement at D23. 

Cameron continued by saying “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.”

Avatar: Fire and Ash is set to premiere on December 19, 2025. The untitled fourth and fifth installments of the franchise are not scheduled for release until December 21, 2029, and December 19, 2031, respectively.