Three animated Avatar: The Last Airbender movies are coming

Avatar: The Last Airbender is coming back, whether you like it or not. The Nickelodeon show ended way back in 2008, but has remained popular ever since, whether it’s fans reliving the excellent story or new people discovering the show, which happened a lot during quarantine. There’s something about this East Asian-inspired fantasy epic that speaks to people, and the powers that be have noticed.

To wit, we’re getting a bunch of new Avatar content in the years to come. Netflix is working on a full live-action remake that will apparently be more “mature” than the original show. Not to be outdone, Nickelodeon has drafted original Last Airbender creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino into Avatar Studios, where they’ll create new animated movies and shows.

We’re finally getting some details on that. Per Deadline, Avatar Studios is at work on three different animated Last Airbender movies, one of which will be directed by Lauren Montgomery, who worked as a storyboard artist on both The Last Airbender and its follow-up The Legend of Korra.

The original creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender are working on these movies (and not on the Netflix remake)

We don’t know when these movies will come out or what they’re about, but we do know that Paramount/Nickelodeon exec Ramsey Naito likes to rub in that the creators of the original series are working on this. Konietzko and DiMartino were originally going to work on Netflix’s live-action remake, you see, but left over creative differences. That creates fertile ground for petty drama. “As original creators Mike and Bryan expand the Avatar universe with us, we’re keeping it all in the family with Lauren bringing the same kind of expert, beautiful work she did on the original series to her new directing duties on the forthcoming theatrical,” Naito said, feeding me.

Or maybe Naito didn’t mean anything by it, but I choose to look on the shadier side of life. All we really know is that we’re going to be blasted with Last Airbender content over the next couple of years. Might as well keep things interesting.

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