EW – Netflix plans to revisit Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Nickelodeon animated series that spawned The Legend of Korra and a series of comics and books, in a new way. The streaming platform announced a new live-action “reimagined” series is coming to the streaming platform. The news comes with the first piece of concept art from artist John Staub of the live-action Aang and his docile, flying animal companion Appa.
But this part should help quell the anxiety brewing in wary bingers: original series creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko are on board as showrunners and executive producers. Production will start in 2019.
Well this is big news to Avatar fans! The Last Airbender is an all-time great TV show. I don’t have a full ranking list of TV shows like I do movies, but Avatar, as a series, would have to be rated somewhere in the 90s for me. It has a good mixture of everything. Humor, drama, action, even valuable life lessons, it has it all. To write it off as “just a cartoon for kids” is shortsighted and would be an opinion likely of someone who has never seen the show.
All of that positivity should point to excitement and optimism for this news. And it does, though it’s cautious optimism. As fans well know, there was already a live-action attempt with M. Knight Shyamalan’s 2010 The Last Airbender. That did not go well, to put it nicely. It was an unmitigated disaster. One of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. The acting, the special effects, the whitewashing of the cast. It was all brutal. It’s not really worth it to get into too much detail. It all stunk. But at the very least, enjoy these videos from two my favorite channels, Screen Junkies and Cinemasins.
But back to the Netflix version, I do have more faith. From the same EW article,
But this part should help quell the anxiety brewing in wary bingers: original series creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko are on board as showrunners and executive producers. Production will start in 2019.
That’s huge. DiMartino and Konietzko were not involved with the 2010 movie, so it is quite a relief to hear they will be heavily involved this time around. Additionally, I see Avatar as being better suited to TV anyway and I think Netflix is a great place for it to land. They love throwing huge piles money to their original programming. The show should have no trouble getting the budget it needs to properly realize the world (in particular the bending effects) that Avatar gave us. All the initial signs point to a final product that should at least be pretty good, with the possibility of being great.
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This is incredible. DeMartino and Konietzko are probably so pumped to be working with Netflix, and not shitty Nickelodeon, who were always on their cases about budget and cutting back.