'Avatar' director permanently leaves the USA to settle in New Zealand

James Cameron, the renowned American filmmaker, has permanently moved his family to New Zealand.

The Avatar director firs visited the country in 1994 and immediately fell in love with it. later in 2011, he bought a farm there with an intention to visit the place to spend a peaceful time away from Southern California.

In an interview, Cameron revealed that he promised himself that he would settle in New Zealand someday and even his wife Suzy Amis had no problem with his desire to live away from the USA.

"When Suzy and I were first getting serious, she said, 'Fine, no problem.' She was game."

He told on the In Depth with Graham Bensinger interview, "Now, later, we have children, we have a family, we've got roots in Malibu and Santa Barbara, that conversation had to be amended slightly, but we did say after Avatar, let's make this happen."

While James was still working on 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water, the COVID-19 pandemic had hit the world in 2020. During that time, him and family decided to pack up and “leave as a family.”

The 71-year-old filmmaker also believed that New Zealand handled the pandemic better than the USA as he said, "New Zealand had eliminated the virus completely twice before a third time when it showed up in a mutated form, it broke through.”

The Titanic director believes that people in the country are, “for the most part, sane as opposed to the United States.”

Cameron’s latest film Avatar: Fire and Ash had a successful run in theatres grossing $1.3 billion worldwide. It turned out to be the third-highest grossing film of 2025.