Director James Cameron cleared the air about Matt Damon’s role in Avatar. Damon’s claim goes back to 2023 when the Good Will Hunting actor spoke to Chris Wallace on CNN. During the conversation, Wallace mentioned that Damon turned down a lead role in Avatar. He added that James Cameron also decided to share a percentage of the money with Damon, which could have been approximately $250 million. Matt Damon said:“I think I am sure it’s the most money an actor ever turned down, you know.”The actor said he was in the middle of shooting one of the Jason Bourne movies. He claimed:“I would have to leave the movie kind of early and leave them in the lurch a little bit, and I didn’t want to do that. My favorite reaction to this was I told John Krasinski and he launches himself out of the chair and he starts pacing the kitchen. He goes, ‘Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Nothing in your life would be different today if you had done that movie except you and I would be having this conversation in space.”Matt Damon also made a similar claim about the role in Avatar in a 2019 interview with GQ. What did James Cameron say about Matt Damon’s claim?Meanwhile, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, James Cameron said that Matt Damon’s claim wasn’t true because he was never offered the role. He said:“He was never offered the part. I can’t remember if I sent him the script or not. I don’t think I did?”He went on to say:“But he was never offered. There was never a deal. We never talked about the character. We never got to that level. It was simply an availability issue.”He explained that Matt Damon had assumed he would have needed a large share of the movie’s earnings to work on Avatar. Cameron said that if that had been the case, the film would never have been made.He added in a joking way that Matt Damon did not need to feel bad or blame himself, saying everything turned out fine and he did not miss out on anything. Praising the actor, James Cameron said:“He felt compelled to call me personally and tell me; he said he didn’t want it to come from the agent, that’s an honorable guy. So all respect to Matt. I’d love to work with him someday. But that never happened. It was a conflation of different things that were happening.”James Cameron talks about his new “Avatar” movie View this post on Instagram Instagram PostSpeaking about Avatar: Fire and Ash with The Hollywood Reporter, James Cameron said the movie was close to him. He said it reflects an anxious time, especially when the present scenario is more difficult than ever. He said:“And trying to get all that into the film and see it reflected back, you know, it feels like that's a bit of me up there and that's a bit of my kids up there. And they crack up over that because they say, ‘Dad, well, first of all, that is so not who I am. Secondly, that maybe is a little bit who I was back when you wrote this 10 years ago, but it's completely irrelevant now.’”James Cameron said he would jokingly tell his children they were right, but his perspective was also valid. He mentioned that back in high school, he wrote a play named “Extinction Syndrome.” In it, he argued that this disease in the human race needed to be fixed. He said that in the present times, the world is connected, and some missiles could wipe people out.