Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Adaptation To Begin Filming In November

The Netflix live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender is set to begin filming this fall in Vancouver, according to the Hollywood blog North Buzz. The adaptation is based on the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which ran for three seasons on Nickelodeon from 2005 to 2008.

Original animation co-creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko originally signed on to oversee the series but left the Netflix adaptation in June 2020 due to creative differences. The Netflix adaptation will see Albert Kim as showrunner and Dan Lin, Ryan Halprin and Lindsey Liberatore as producers, according to Hollywood North Buzz.

The Avatar: The Last Airbender franchise has expanded into comics, video games, a series of sequels, and a live-action adaptation directed by M. Night Shyamalan, which has received critical criticism in particular. The original series was added to netflix in 2020, rekindling its popularity. In February of this year, ViacomCBS announced the development of an animated Avatar film made by a new division of Nickelodeon called Avatar Studios, of which DiMartino and Konietzko are co-leaders.

According to Hollywood North Buzz, Netflix’s live-action series, scheduled to begin filming in mid-November, “takes place in a fantasy world, home to humans, fantastic beasts and supernatural spirits.” There are three pre-industrialized nations: the Earth Kingdom, the Water Tribes, and the Air Nomads, and one industrialized nation, the Fire Nation, which can make various machines.

In every nation there are men and women called Benders who are able to manipulate their native element. One person can handle all four. Called Avatar, they are “the spirit of the planet manifested in human form”.