Avatar: The Last Airbender showrunner Albert Kim gets candid about M. Night Shyamalan’s panned movie adaptation. The live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender is set for release on February 22, 2024.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Kim responds to the criticism of Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender. Check out the full quote from Kim below:
“I’ll tell you something, I never watched the Shyamalan movie. There was a period of time where I thought I should watch it, but then I thought, I don’t really want those images in my head as I start to go forward with our version of this project. So I avoided it purposefully.”
“Now, that’s not to say I hadn’t heard the criticisms of it.”
“I knew what fans didn’t like about it in general, but those kinds of pitfalls weren’t hard to avoid. For instance, an authentic version of the casting, that’s something that we would’ve done regardless. And, to be fair, Shymalan’s movie was made at a time when the technology hadn’t caught up yet to what the world deserved. So I knew that the VFX was going to be much better than whatever they did anyway.”
“I do remember when we were well into production, [executive producer/director] Michael Goi had said, ‘You should just watch the Shyamalan version for fun now.’ I’m like, ‘No, I’ve gone this far. I’m just going to skip it. I don’t want to.’ He kept trying to tease me into watching. I think I’m going to carry through with my track record of not having seen it.”
More to come…
Avatar: The Last Airbender (Live-Action)
Based on the acclaimed animated Nickelodeon television series, Avatar: The Last Airbender is an action-adventure fantasy series developed by Albert Kim. The series follows Aang, a young man training to harness the four elements to live up to the title of Avatar – the one who will restore balance to the world.
