James Cameron hits Matt Damon with a fact check about purported Avatar role

But Cameron now says that it didn’t quite go down as Damon remembers it. “He was never offered the part,” Cameron told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published yesterday. “I can’t remember if I sent him the script or not. I don’t think I did?” In fairness, the next bit does sound mostly like Damon described: “Then we wound up on a call and he said, ‘I love to explore doing a movie with you. I have a lot of respect for you as a filmmaker. [Avatar] sounds intriguing. But I really have to do this Jason Bourne movie. I’ve agreed to it, it’s a direct conflict, and so, regretfully, I have to turn it down.’” 

Still, Cameron maintains that these conversations were very preliminary. “But he was never offered,” he says now. “There was never a deal. We never talked about the character. We never got to that level. It was simply an availability issue.” He adds about Damon’s claim of being offered “10% of it,” “Now what he’s done is he’s extrapolated ‘I get 10 percent of the gross on all my films.’ And if, in his mind, that’s what it would’ve taken for him to do Avatar, then it wouldn’t have happened. Trust me on that.” 

However, the Avatar director does think that Damon refusing to back out of a prior commitment for another movie is the “ethical” stance to take. “So he’s off the hook and doesn’t have to beat himself up anymore,” Cameron says. “Matt, it’s okay, buddy! You didn’t miss anything.” In conclusion: “I’d love to work with him someday. But that never happened. It was a conflation of different things that were happening.” Maybe Damon can get involved with whatever Terminator ideas Cameron is cooking up.