Netflix Debuts First Live-Action ‘Avatar’ Trailer

After years in development, Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the iconic animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender is almost ready to debut. The streaming service finally debuted the first teaser for the show this week — after literal years of development. It was first announced in the fall of 2018. In 2020, the original Avatar’s creators, Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, left the project over creative differences with the studio. Eventually Albert Kim joined the live-action Avatar as show-runner.

The cast of the show includes Daniel Dae Kim, Gordon Cormier, Ken Leung, Maria Zhang, Kiawentiio, and many more. You can check out the first teaser for the show below:

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Here is the series’ official synopsis:

The four nations of the world once lived in harmony, with the Avatar, master of all four elements, keeping peace between them. But everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked and wiped out the Air Nomads, the first step taken by the firebenders towards conquering the world. AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER, follows a young Air Nomad named Aang, as he reawakens to a world ravaged by war. Together with his newfound friends Sokka and Katara, he embarks on an action-packed quest to take his rightful place as the next AVATAR.

Albert Kim previously had this to say about why he wanted to make a live-action version of a beloved animated series…

The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became. VFX technology has advanced to the point where a live-action version can not only faithfully translate what had been done in animation — it can bring a rich new visual dimension to a fantastic world. We’ll be able to see bending in a real and visceral way we’ve never seen before. Also, Netflix’s format meant we had an opportunity to reimagine a story that had originally been told in self-contained half-hour episodes as an ongoing serialized narrative. That meant story points and emotional arcs we’d loved in the original could be given even more room to breathe and grow.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is scheduled to premiere on Netflix in 2024.