Months before its October premiere on Paramount+, Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender has leaked online, and from the sounds of it, the footage is the real deal.
It started on April 12 when X user @ImStillDissin claimed Nickelodeon had accidentally emailed them the entire film. They posted two clips totaling around 3 minutes of footage.
SECTION BELOW INCLUDES SPOILERSThe first shows an adult Team Avatar reviving an ancient Airbender who had been frozen in ice, a clear nod to how Aang himself was found.
The second, apparently from later in the film, features that same Airbender attempting to drag a temple out of the Spirit World and into the physical world, which goes about as chaotically as you’d expect.
Paramount responded by issuing DMCA takedowns, and the videos were pulled with a copyright notice, which, more than anything, confirmed the footage was legitimate.
The clips also revealed a credits image that filled in some casting blanks. Ke Huy Quan plays an Avatar named Xian; Ken Jeong voices the popular (and perpetually wronged) Cabbage Merchant; Dave Bautista’s character is a villain named Tagah (the ancient Airbender from the clips); and Taika Waititi voices a Spirit World creature called a Gorillavark.
The rest of the known cast includes Eric Nam as Aang, Steven Yeun as Zuko, and Geraldine Viswanathan, Freida Pinto, and Dee Bradley Baker in various roles.
Reporters who watched the footage said the 2D animation was impressive, detailed, and fluid and that the voices matched previously announced casting. The celebrity-heavy lineup might take some adjusting to, but the animation itself seems to have landed.
The film is directed by Lauren Montgomery and Steve Ahn, developed by Flying Bark, and produced under Avatar Studios, which was set up by original series creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.
It’s set after the original series but before The Legend of Korra, making it new story territory rather than a retread.
Paramount had already frustrated fans by moving the film from theaters to Paramount+ and with zero official promotional material released so far, the leak filled a vacuum that the studio itself created. No trailers, no stills, nothing. So when clips surfaced, the internet responded as anyone would have expected.
