“Hiroshima” Is Cameron’s Post-Avatar Next

Martin Sheen has signed on to narrate the audiobook of Charles Pellegrino’s novel “Ghosts of Hiroshima” which filmmaker James Cameron will adapt to the screen reports Deadline.

The book’s teaser art has “Soon to be a major motion picture from James Cameron” emblazoned on the cover and releases on August 5th.

As previously reported, Cameron plans to use the book as the basis for a film of the same name and which is being geared up as his first non-Avatar directorial effort since 1997’s “Titanic”.

Speaking with the trade, Cameron re-affirms that is still the case and says landing Emmy winner Sheen for the audiobook is part of his dream for the project:

“Martin Sheen is my dream come true to read this book for audio. His voice-over narration for Apocalypse Now still haunts me, and for a subject this dark, he will give it the gravitas and humanity that it needs.”

The book is releasing on the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb in 1945. Part of the book focuses on Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a Japanese man who survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima, got on a train to Nagasaki, and then survived the bombing of that city.

Cameron tells the trade he will shoot the film as soon as “Avatar” production permits and the plan is for an “uncompromising theatrical film.” He confirms he met Tsutomu Yamaguchi just days before he died: “He was handing the baton of his personal story to us, so I have to do it. I can’t turn away from it.”

Pellegrino served as a science consultant to Cameron on “Titanic” and “Avatar,” while some of his writings also directly inspired Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park” novel.

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