While M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender may have been a critical disaster, the film has supplied Paramount with a decent box-office run, taking in over $79 million domestically, as it heads into its second weekend. While Shyamalan still has a way to go before he recoups the $150 million budget, it’s not hard to imagine the film turning a decent profit.
Of course, with that kind of box-office potential, it’s only a matter of time before Paramount starts talking about The Last Airbender sequel – poor critical reception didn’t stop the studio from making Transformers 3. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Shyamalan has already mapped out two Airbender sequels.
Speaking with MTV, Shyamalan confirmed that he’s already begun work, in an unofficial capacity, on a pair of Airbender sequels. Just like any director staring down the barrel of a critical bomb, Shyamalan is already resting on one of Hollywood’s principle go-to change-ups, promising that the Airbender sequels will be darker in tone.
“I do [have things mapped out]. The third is more ambiguous, but the second one, I’ve written a draft that I’m really happy with and is darker and richer, and it has a wonderful antagonist in it in Azula, who’s kind of like our only real, pure antagonist in the series, so I’m excited about that.”
Check out the interview snippet below to hear it straight from Shayamalan himself:
Shyamalan also indicates that certain Last Airbender footage that was shot, but cut, will not appear as deleted material on the DVD release – as the scenes have been saved for the future sequels. Giving a hint at the direction Shyamalan hopes to take the franchise.
Hint: Elite female warriors en route.
“We shot [an amazing scene with the Kyoshi Warriors], and we spent an unbelievable amount of time choreographing them. And they just distracted from the movie, because the movie wasn’t about them. I probably won’t show the Kyoshi Warriors [on the DVD] because I want to save them for the second movie, because I’m going to have to introduce them all over again.”
Since Paramount already took a number of liberties with the franchise, to the studio an Airbender sequel is probably a no-brainer - considering the box-office potential, not to mention cliffhanger in the first film. But will they bring Shyamalan back? Especially since most critics have universally placed the blame, for Airbender’s failure, squarely on the director’s shoulders.
Shyamalan seems pretty rooted in the production process (having already shot scenes that could be used in a sequel), as well as the future direction of the franchise. It’s hard to imagine Paramount uprooting him simply because critics thought the first film was a total mess. While many fans of the Avatar cartoon, myself included, might have felt cheated by Shyamalan’s Airbender film, the general public is embracing the film with cash-money. While Shyamalan might have made a mockery of the cartoon as we know it, Aang and the Avatar franchise now have more commercial appeal than ever before.
Hopefully, the critical failure of The Last Airbender will finally be the kick in the pants that Shyamalan has needed for years – getting him out of his own head and back in the business of quality filmmaking.
What do you think of the prospect of a trilogy for The Last Airbender? Do you think Shyamalan is the man to finish the job?
Source: MTV
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Gawd!! Save us!!!
i hope this movie tanks and they fire his ass.
the creaters or “Avatar: The Last Airbender” should apologize for letting the studio mangle such an awesome show. the best way to apologize is to cancel the next movies and release a 4th season to keep people from remembering that peice of garbage movie
yea, I hope that the creators of the cartoon are pissed, because Shyamalan completely butcher almost every aspect of the show
for glory sake! for the sake of avatar fans! please just stop right now! we have enough sadness in our selfs after the horror of movie that The last airbender was. Please just quite Mr.Shyamalan, I am begging the avatar community to stop this insanity!
damn man, dont they ever learn??
Whatever dudes, his work will suffice for what you don’t like.
lol..umm no not really man, sorry
Oookay, it wouldn’t suffice for you my man, but for others it will.
others, sure, most of the public has made their views on this in the review thread lol
Yeah, that ‘most of the public’ are excluded from like 6.something billion people around the world. There must be at least 1 billion people who liked the movie bro. That’s just my probability.
omg lol, delusional much?
No, it’s called positive thoughts.
Sounds like Darren works for Paramount or something.
Yes, it WAS the director’s fault that this tanked! The directing was clearly awful! Nevermind the fact that the story (Book 1) needed to be told in maybe 3 or 4 movies!
And the money it’s raking in? Could some of it be money from the 3d sales gullible people paid for? For shame, Paramount!
I guess we know the second one will be even it waworse, considering the fact hes taking footage he cut out of the first and using it in the 2nd movie. If M. Night felt his film would be better without it the 1st time , why use that as your starting point for the second film. And wont everyone look a little older for the second movie, and then have this left over footage of them stuck in somewhere looking young again. ??????
The movie i s currently making money.
If it continues to do so ,
I hope he will address some of the concerns fans have expressed about the current film and try to do better the second time around.
I hope the studio realizes that no one will see the sequel. The only reason people are seeing the first one is because they want to see how the movie despite what critics say. After seeing it, I doubt anyone wants to see a sequel that uses the same ingredients as the first. Fire M Night and I might see the sequel. I still didn’t like Noah Ringer as Aang though.
Oh truuuust me Bob, just like they are gonna see it because of what critics say this time around, they’ll be seeing it the other time around too.
Shyamalan made with TLA a worst job than Michael Bay did with Transformers…
Please, M. Night Shyamalan, let anyone else to take on this rich material. Leave this franchise alone for god sake…
Now, speaking seriously, If the studio wants to make a sucessful movie, they should start doing “The Incredible Hulk” operation… do you know what I mean?
If Shyamalan directs the sequel, then I will not be seeing it like the first one. I think he has no idea what he is doing with this franchise. At this point anyone besides Uwe Boll would do better writing/directing this franchise.
I’m ready for him to stop directing
I liked it. Will see sequel. Love Shyamalan.
That’s the spirit Staurt.
Oh damn, I spelled your name wrong, Stuart.
I liked it too. It wasn’t perfect, probably should have been told over multiple movies or at least made about an hour longer, but I just didn’t see the horrid mess that everyone else did. I thought it set a pretty good foundation for the next two. Hopefully Shyamalan has worked the kinks out & will be able to improve on what worked in the sequels.
I like that
There is no justice in this world — or business sense in Paramount — if Shyamalan is given control of Airbender 2. He took what should have been the launch of a potential billion dollar franchise and produced something that just might make back its money after foreign DVD sales. He took “Harry Potter” and turned it into “Dune.”
Retire, Mr. Shyamalan.
- mattmchugh
I didn’t think he heard you mattmchugh
-He shouldn’t direct anything, ever again
-Not TV commericals, high schools sports as a matter of fact he shouldn’t even shoot home moves
-SAG should ban him from touching a camera
-He may go in the Razzie Hall of Fame
-He should have named it Unthinkable, cause it was unthinkable how he could do such a terrible job.
- I heard he is changing his name to M. Knight Schtop-makinbadmovies-alot
So to answe the question… No he should not make the next 2 movies
he really shouldnt not to be racist but whats with the mostly indian actors in the series there asian like forreal it would be way better if we let the origin show it self as it is suppose to be like in the series
right, like aang appearing white, katara and sokka appearing darker skinned (eskimo or middle eastern or native american, perhaps, hard to tell), and zuko appearing to be a cross between asian and white? why don’t we just give zuko gold eye contacts while we’re at it!
Saw it. Wasn’t as bad as everyone says. And the kids loved it.
theres one of youre one billion darren lol
See, told ya. Just imagine 1 billion minus 1 less person saying that same thing
Funny Darren because people tend to talk negative about this movie. Not just critics and not just on this site. You like the movie, but almost no one else does. Go to the theaters this week? No one is waiting in long lines to see Airbender. I stood in line for 40 minutes today to go see Despicable me and I could hear what everyone was going to see I heard literally everything that’s out being bought up with the exceptions of Airbender. This is not an exaggeration in the 40 mins i was there one person bought a ticket to see Airbender. Wait till you see the dip it takes this week think along the lines of Twilight with out a great opening weekend.
You know, I could understand why people don’t go to see these movies; it’s because of ‘hear-say’. People listen to the critics say and base their trust in a review. I wouldn’t lie to tell ya, but if I am excited to see a movie that got mostly a negative response, I’m not gonna let them cramp my style, I’m gonna judge that movie myself with my own eyes.
Well on behalf of the world I’d like to thank you for being part of the reason why crappy horrible films like this get sequels.
Thank you for being a part of the problem.
well darren, the reason, the more PROBABLE reason could be that everyones knows that M.NS sucks
Ok so we have established Darren that you hate critics and think that they are wrong and that people disagree with them. I think you don’t understand that critics are people as well they make up a part of the general population and they all agree this movie sucks. Ok fine so in your mind Critics are subpar humans and don’t count as people. Their opinions are null and void in your mind. That’s how it comes across when you say people like this film, but critics don’t.
Ok fine I can accept that you hate critics and they are not humans. So lets look at what the humans say. Over at Box office Mojo they allow people to vote on movies and decide weather it is good by averaging out what the people think. At Box office mojo the average for Airbender is a C your options are A, B, C, D, F and the average is a C that’s not good. This was voted on by nearly 500 people.
IMDB has a similar system only they use the 1-10 scale. Over at IMDB it’s averaging a 4.4 out of 10 in case you don’t know that’s really bad a 4.4! That’s been voted on by over 7 thousand people. 7,000 people voted on that and it came with very very negative results.
RT has all the critics, but it also has a section for people to write their own reviews and scores. These are regular joes from the street not getting paid for their opinion guys just like you. They gave it a 52% out of 100%. That’s not good. That’s substantially better than the 8% the critics give it so the general public doesn’t think it’s as bad as the critics, but according to these stats they still think it’s awful. Oh that 52% is from over 30K people that’s 30,000 people who voted and they average out to saying this film is bad.
If you like this film that’s fine hell that’s great for you. Are you alone? No. Of course not I’m sure there are other people who like it as well. Does the general public love it though? Hell no. In general the movie is considered bad. Averaging out to be very low by the general public you claim loves it. If you love it that’s great and it’s not a problem for anyone else who loves it either, but don’t claim that the critics are dumb or wrong some how because you disagree. You happen to like it, but the majority of people do not.
My gosh, I NEVER said that I hate critics gentlemen, it never came across my comments. I NEVER said Critics are NOT humans
hahaha! I respect you boys for making your opinions and I have nothing against you for saying such. And no I disagree with what you said that their opinions are null and void in my mind…… C’mon Daniel. I’m gonna say this once, the comment above was VERY immature and you did not criticize me like a proper critic would.
And Imdb is soo lame, they never have 100% accurate results on their site; it’s user edited right? I don’t trust that site, but anyway, no hard feelings here
It’s user voted on that’s the point. Your talking about what the public likes that’s why i pointed out RT, Box office mojo and IMDB because it’s what the public voted. You were saying that the general population likes this film.
Also IMDB is usually very accurate it’s usually only wrong about movies that haven’t even been filmed yet. If you look up what people will be in say in 2012 it might be wrong, but if your looking up movies from 2003 it’s pretty much always right.
I didn’t say that you called the critics non human. I’m saying your comments come off as if you hate critics and you make unsubstantial claims about the general population and you don’t include critics as part of the population. Which is like saying they are not human. Obviously i was being satirical, but it went unnoticed by you. However, your comments do make it seem like you hate critics and think they are dumb. You find them pointless your comments make that clear by telling people to ignore critics and watch a movie for your self. The critics job is to review a movie to help you save your money and maybe prevent people from feeding crap films because they don’t know if it’s good or not. The critics try to prevent us from suffering for 2 hours and wasting our money.
By telling people to ignore critics you are saying their opinions are null and void.
wow you like to talk, dan. i just started skimming by the middle of the second paragraph! keep it short and to the point! and, yeah, most critics do happen to suck, but it’s because their people and they do have their own opinions. doesn’t mean we have to let them make up our minds for us. but, hey, i’m sure you’ll have a come back for that, too, since you have this need to convince us all that you’re right.
Darren,
Critics HATED Transformers 2, so that blows your argument. I’ve read before that most people aren’t influenced by reviews. I think the biggest factor is word of mouth.
Here’s my thought process about M. Night:
- LOVED The Sixth Sense
- I thought Unbreakable was an awesome concept, well executed, and right as the movie ended I wanted a sequel immediately.
- I thought The Village was “just OK” – a bit of a disappointment after the previous two films.
- I thought Signs was OK, but the patina was starting to wear off. Shyamalan had backed himself into a corner story-wise because he was “the guy who made awesome twist-ending movies” and now the audience spent the movie looking forward to and trying to outguess him on what the twist would be.
- The Lady in the Water was bizarre, self-indulgent and sloppy (Mic booms visible in shots? Really?).
- It’s about this point that I start thinking “c’mon dude, redeem yourself with another great flick.” And what comes next? The Happening (shudder).
So by the time Airbender comes around, the attitude is more like “All right, prove to us that you didn’t just get lucky with your first couple of films and that you still actually have some talent to match your ego.”
Airbender just wasn’t GOOD. That’s all there is to it. If it was a made-for-TV movie, then one’s expectations drop dramatically – I wouldn’t think it was any better, but I’d say “well, it’s made for TV by some no name director, what do you expect?”.
If this had been a great film, I would have given it a positive review and proclaimed “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Shyamalan is finally BACK!”.
I hope that makes it clear.
Vic
@ Vic and Daniel and anthony…. guys, buddies. At this point, it will be totally pointless to argue my likes and dislikes about the ole’ Shyamalan films as of now. You guys have definitely brought to my attention some very good points concerning these films and I have took them into consideration for sure. And I would like to apologize for not being acceptant of critics reviews and seemingly being hard-headed, as you might say. You know what? I do use IMDb sometimes because some uses of it is helpful. But I have found a real joy in this ‘argument’ or ‘discussion’ as it were, it was very helpful to me to analyze how and what might be accepted by the majority of the public because I too m working my way up to being a film-maker in the near future
You guys are awesome Ranters. Vic, I respect you buddy, thanks for your input
Hey, I *liked* The Happening.
…probably cause I like trees. What.
Gotta admit though, that scene with the dude laying down under that gigantic lawn mower was pretty banging.
“Stay ahead of the wind!”
ROFLMAO 8)
Even Mark Wahlberg said recently that “The Happening” was a bad movie.
And who doesn’t like trees?
Vic
Your are wrong on a couple things. “The Village” was a great movie if you went in with expectations other than ‘this is a scary movie.’ It still portrayed that twist at the end. Just image that film as if it were happening in real life. It is amazingly creative and original. Also, “Signs” had a lot “jumpy” moments which made it hard to predict/expect things throughout. It was filmed with a realism to it which I enjoyed because for once an alien movie felt like it could be real. Just a couple movies of M. Night I felt didn’t get enough credit. Airbender, while deviated from original cartoon, had pros and cons.
Incidentally, so did I and plenty of others… only we thought it was awful
I watched the movie with my OWN eyes and I admit to all the others.The effects were HORRIBLE, the dialogs were boring and not interesting for the story and the actors weren’t the best ones too.
I wish I could say better things about this movie because I LOVED avatar the cartoon but it’s so sad what M.Night Shyamalan did to this great story! And I just hope they take another director for the next two movies,then I’ll maybe watch it again in the cinema.
Look the tailers didn’t give indication of how awful the film would actually be and some people only remember M. Night for Six sense so his name still had appeal despite the horrible list of films he has made.
People went to see it opening weekend and the 3D turnout for the film was decent that’s a large chunk of it’s money. Given the poor reception of this film from not only critics, but the general public as well we should expect a fairly large second week drop. The future of this franchise depends on how large this second week drop is. If it’s 60% expect a sequal if it’s around 70 we might be saved.
To those claiming the public likes this film think again. Lots of non critics outside of this website have expressed their disappointment. There are polls all over the place that hate on this film. The majority of the audience did not enjoy this film. The problem is that alot of people thought they were going to and rushed to go see it. Wait for the second week numbers to see how displeased the public was. Unless Darren plans to watch the movie 200 times a day starting today in 3D.
i’m not gonna say that i was inpressed by the movie, but since i am a fan of the last airbender cartoon series. i still would like to see the sequel, because that was something i was waiting on after the final series of the cartoon. the director did what he could do, but someone else should direct the next one to come.
Kids are the key to success for The Last Airbender and its sequels. Look at Shrek, Toy Story, and all the other successful, animated movies aimed at children. Granted, those are enjoyable for many grown-ups as well, but they’re made specifically for the little ones. Heck, even The Pacifier banked over 100 million domestically, without CGI or an established fanbase.
Children don’t dwell on bad acting, horrible pronunciation of simple names, lack of character development, and all the other ingredients that go into an overall poor adaptation. They see the CGI bending and beautiful set pieces, they hear the dumbed-down humor, and they’re satisfied.
And I highly doubt many of those children are on blogs reading the terrible reviews it’s receiving. Not that they would care.
Bane
Let’s not forget that many of those kids will go with ADULTS who will not want to put up with such shoddy directing.
dude, parents don’t care what they take their children to see. a lot of people took four and five year olds to see percy jackson and had to leave the theatre with them because they started crying because they were scared of the Underworld. same thing happened with the last Harry Potter, and I’m sure is gonna happen again. the number of times i’ve seen those movies have given me plenty of opportunities to witness such scenes. clearly, if a child wants to see something, the parent is not going to say no.
When I saw it, eight year old kids were yelling at the scene. No joke. It was pretty funny. So, yeah, some kids don’t appreciate shoddy acting, mispronounciations of names and with holes in it the size of Uranus.
*plot holes the size of Uranus.
Just now noticing how old these comments are. Hahaha.
“M. Night Shyamalan Ready for ‘Airbender 2′”
NO PLEASE SOMEBODY STOP HIM, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/
This really shouldn’t happen.
My kid got bored with the film but has made me sit through the cartoon series in massive chunks. (If he could, we’ed watch the whole three books without stopping, that’s roughly 1342 mins (or 22hrs and 20mins). I feel M Night rushed everything and explored nothing. If he does do book 2, he’ll need to let the visuals do the talking and not the narration and get it edited in a much better way. (I’d prefer it if they brought in someone like Chris Columbus of Home Alone, Harry Potter 1 & 2, Percy Jackson, fame)
maybe they can give his the final deathblow with brett ratner directing?
This movie was aimed at kids not to the hard core anime fans of the show as long as it makes money they will make the sequel regardless of what you guys think. I haven’t even seen the movie yet so I wont say whether its good or bad I think the trailers looked pretty good though.
Please don’t
i really hope he doesnt screw this up….maybe with all the heat hes gettin hell finally put his ego aside and start staying closer to the source material…or he could butcher book 2…. who knows
I am looking forward to the sequel. Seriously, if the movie sucked as much as everyone keeps ranting about, why are so many people watching it? I don’t really get what was so terrible about it. Someone is going to answer “everything” but that doesn’t help me. Is it just the people who are part of this avatar series thing that are up in arms over this movie? Everyone that I’ve talked to thought the movie was fine (but none of them know anything about the series). I would let him finish the series. Maybe he’ll take the advice of some of the critics and they’ll calm down.
So many people watched it opening weekend because it’s hard to know if a movie will be good or god awful based on trailers alone so people went in to it expecting it to be good. You can’t judge how a good a movie is based on it’s Box Office especially based on it’s opening weekend. It’s not smart to judge a movie based on it’s box office at all, but if your going to at least wait until the second weekend. Opening weekend does good often but when the movie is bad second weekend drops off.
Spiderman 3 had a great opening so did the Twilight franchise as well as X3, Rush Hour 2 and 3 and even Transformers 2, but all those films were terrible. Lots of people saw these films does that make them great? Check out their opening weekends and then see their second week drops some as high as 70% drop second weekend.
I could add in movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, Alice and Wonderland, Shrek the third or Avatar, but those are my opinion some people thought they were good. The films above though straight up are bad that’s a fact. They were poorly written, acted, and directed. They were just bad films.
Also for the record I think the cartoon is overrated and am not a fan of the franchise. The film isn’t terrible because it didn’t stick close to the cartoon the film is terrible because it sucks. It’s awful.
lol. daniel, youre killing me man lol, its funny how you come under rapid fire for your beliefs, yet youre really composed in your replies
Yea I’ve noticed this anthony lol. I try to keep my cool and only really lose it when someone goes crazy on me and strikes a nerve lol. I take alot about being so negative and hating everything, but there are plenty of things i’ve commented on loving on this site people tend to only notice when i’m negative though because it catches your attention. People don’t really care when you love something only when you hate it. I will admit i’ve been a little more negative this year over previous years, but that’s because it’s been a particularly bad year for movies. Also because I’m still pissed that Cameron can make a film of him self watching TV that’s two hours long and make a billion dollars no matter how bad it is because his name is on it. I don’t know how he does it it’s a gift though for him at least. Oh and Twilight sucks lol. I swear I should take an open disscusion one day and type a huge article about all the thigns i love so I can get some positive PR lol.
the people who review the most tend to be the people who hated it and just like to hear themselves complain. it’s rare that someone who actually loves something goes on and on about it. they kinda tend to follow that “well i liked it and i don’t care what anybody else thinks” theory while those who hate it have to give you every little thing they found wrong with it and why they’re right and why you should agree with them. personally, those kind of people make me sick.
You should really give the cartoon some credit because, afterall, it is aimed at the attention of children. It has excellent life lessons and values hidden in it which is always good to show kids. I’m not saying you have to like it or that all kids should watch it, it may not suit the parents’ beliefs, but still, my little sister, who is only seven years old, learned alot from it. I myself, and I am quite a few years older than my sister, enjoyed it and took some wisdom from it.
as for me, i got beat up on another thread about avatar being re-released, i thought it was all hilarious, its funny how many of the same minions will give him more money for just 8 mins more and added 3d crap lol..i know this was way off topic but, oh well lol
I wouldn’t mind if he was still the director, I just want him to fix all the mistakes. Like character development and movie pacing. I want them interact with each other because they didn’t do that in first film. And maybe get to know Appa and Momo more. And show Avatar Roku please! He had major parts in the cartoon series. And maybe better acting could help a lot too.