Thursday 16 December 2021

Netflix's AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER adds more castmembers

Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender has added a number of new castmembers.

Newcomer Elizabeth Yu has been cast as Azula, the princess of the Fire Nation. Azula is a master of lightning-bending. She is the ruthlessly ambitious younger sister of Prince Zuko (Dallas James Liu).

Maria Zhang (WorkInProgress) will play Suki. A skilled warrior and leader of a band of Kyoshi Warriors, elite female warriors following the ideals of the deceased Avatar, Kyoshi. Suki becomes a recurring ally of Team Avatar in their struggle against the Fire Nation. Tamlyn Tomita (Babylon 5, Star Trek: Picard) will play her mother, Yukari. Yvonne Chapman (Kung Fu, Family Law) will player Avatar Kyoshi herself, presumably in flashbacks and dream sequences (which is how she appears in the original animated series).

Casey Camp-Horinek (Reservation Dogs) is playing Gran-Gran, Katara and Sokka's grandmother and the matriarch of their village.

The already-announced cast includes Gordon Cormier as Aang, Kiawantiio as Katara, Ian Ousley as Sokka, Dallas Liu as Zuko, Daniel Dae Kim as Fire Lord Ozai, Paul Sun Hyung-Lee as Uncle Iroh, Lim Kay Siu as Gyatso and Ken Leung as Commander Zhao.

Production on Avatar: The Last Airbender is set to begin in the new few weeks, to debut on Netflix in late 2022 or (more likely) early 2023. Albert Kim is executive producing and showrunning.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought production had started a few weeks ago already actually.

Thadlerian said...

Seems they're doing a lot of things right, representation-wise. I really want this to be good, not least to spite all the hate they received for ditching DiMartino and Konietzko (a move I was intrigued by, given their mediocre performance with the Legend of Korra).

But as I mentioned under the Cowboy Bebop review, successfully recreating an animated work as live action is functionally impossible, so it'll probably fail all the same.