Academy Award-winning director James Cameron has obtained the film rights for Charles Pellegrino’s forthcoming book, Ghosts of Hiroshima. The nonfiction release, which draws upon accounts from real-life survivors of the atomic bombs, along with 2015’s Last Train From Hiroshima, will be used by Cameron to create an “uncompromising theatrical film” about the World War II-era blasts.
Slated for release in August 2025 via Blackstone Publishing – the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Americans – Ghosts of Hiroshima is slated to be similar to Pellegrino’s earlier book, which examines the devastation caused by the detonations and how survivors came to terms with what happened in the days and weeks after.
The film adaptation of the book and Last Train From Hiroshima will tell the true story of a man who survived the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, only to take a train to Nagasaki and survive the blast that took place there just three days later. Twenty-nine-year-old engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi was the one to experience this, and he’s thought to be the only person to have survived both bombs.
Blackstone CEO Josh Stanton told Deadline that the company “is thrilled and honored to be the publisher of Ghosts of Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino, which will serve as part of the source material for James Cameron’s epic motion picture.”
Pellegrino has been a long-time collaborator of Cameron‘s, with him serving as a consultant on Titanic (1997) and the Avatar franchise. Speaking with Deadline about the project, the director revealed it’s a topic he’s always wanted to dive into.
“It’s a subject that I’ve wanted to do a film about, that I’ve been wrestling with how to do it, over the years,” he said. “I met Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just days before he died. He was in the hospital. He was handing the baton of his personal story to us, so I have to do it. I can’t turn away from it.”
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Cameron plans to tackle the World War II-based project when he’s afforded the time, as he’s currently working on the upcoming instalments for Avatar, which are slated for release in 2025, ’29 and ’31, respectively.