Director James Cameron will take viewers behind the scenes of his blockbuster “Avatar” franchise in a new documentary set to premiere on Disney+ next month.

“Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films,” a two-part documentary exploring the creation of Cameron’s science fiction epic, will debut Nov. 7 on the streaming platform. The project arrives just over a month before “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the third installment in the series, hits theaters Dec. 19.

The documentary examines the production of 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” while offering an early look at the forthcoming sequel through behind-the-scenes footage, concept art and interviews with cast members and filmmakers.

Cameron, late producer Jon Landau and stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña and Kate Winslet appear in the film discussing the franchise’s pioneering performance capture technology. The technique translates actors’ movements and facial expressions into the blue-skinned humanoid Na’vi characters that populate the alien moon of Pandora.

“I’m going to let you in on a little secret,” Cameron says in the documentary’s trailer. “As much as we use computers and technology, ‘Avatar’ is made by an incredibly talented team of people who bring every expression, every emotional beat and the entire world to life.”

For “The Way of Water,” Cameron and his team refined performance capture methods for underwater sequences, requiring the cast to learn free diving in a custom 680,000-gallon water tank. Production took crews from California locations including Manhattan Beach, San Pedro and the Channel Islands to the Bahamas, Hawaii and New Zealand.

“If not for the actors, Pandora would just be a beautiful world with no life in it,” Saldaña says in the trailer.

Days before the trailer was released, Saldaña hinted in an interview with Beyond Noise that a documentary may be coming, saying it would allow them to “explain, in a meticulous way, why performance capture is the most powerful form of acting.”

“It gives us the credit, the ability to own 100 percent of our performance on screen,” she said in the interview. 

Worthington emphasizes the human element behind the digital characters: “There’s not one thing that you see us do that is animated. It is all us.”

Thomas C. Grane directed and produced the documentary.

The original “Avatar” in 2009 and its 2022 sequel each earned more than $2 billion at the global box office, ranking among the highest-grossing films in history. 

“Avatar: Fire and Ash” will see Worthington and Saldaña return as Jake Sully and Neytiri, joined by Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Oona Chaplin, Cliff Curtis and others. Two additional sequels are scheduled for 2029 and 2031.