Earlier this year, Miley Cyrus reflected on the wreckage and destruction caused by the fires that devastated multiple areas of Los Angeles. It hit close to home for the musician who lost her house in Malibu during the Woolsey Fire in 2018. The traumatic event led Cyrus to scrap the EP trilogy she started with She Is Coming, having lost notes and hard drives in the fire. She took it as a sign that those songs weren’t meant for her. Now, Cyrus has found one that is: an original recording for Avatar: Fire and Ash.
“Having been personally affected by fire and being rebuilt from the ashes, this project holds profound meaning for me,” Cyrus wrote on Instagram, sharing a brief snippet of the record, which doesn’t currently have a set release date. Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third film in the franchise, is scheduled for theatrical release on Dec. 19.
“Even through the flames/Even through the ashes in the sky,” Cyrus sings on the record, backed by a piano melody. “Baby, when we dream/We dream as one.” The singer co-wrote the song with previous collaborators Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt. Ronson and Cyrus share the hit single “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart,” while Wyatt and Cyrus first worked together in 2018 before teaming up for She Is Coming the following year.
Cyrus was nominated for Best Original Song at the 2025 Golden Globes for “Beautiful That Way,” the song she created with Wyatt and Lykke Li for Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl.
“Thank you, Jim, for the opportunity to turn that experience into musical medicine,” Cyrus continued in her statement. “The film’s themes of unity, healing, and love resonate deeply within my soul, and to be even a small star in the universe the Avatar family has created is truly a dream come true.”
Speaking with Rolling Stone earlier this year, Avatar creator James Cameron said, “I’ve justified making Avatar movies to myself for the last 20 years, not based on how much money we made, but on the basis that hopefully it can do some good, it can help connect us, it can help connect us to our lost aspect of ourself that connects with nature and respects nature and all those things. So do I think that movies are the answer to our human problems? No, I think they’re limited because people sometimes just want entertainment, and they don’t want to be challenged in that way. I think Avatar is a Trojan horse strategy that gets you into a piece of entertainment, but then works on your brain and your heart a little bit in a way.”
