AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER sequel film gets 2025 release date

Paramount have revealed a first look at the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender sequel film. The new animated film will be released on 10 October 2025.

The new film is set some years after the events of Avatar: The Last Airbender but still decades before the events of spin-off show The Legend of Korra. Based on the still, Aang and the gang are maybe 10-15 years older than in the original show.

Avatar co-creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko previously explored the years immediately after the events of the original show in a series of comic books and graphic novels, which explored the aftermath of the devastating war against the Fire Lord and the fate of the Fire Kingdom's colonies on the mainland, which the other kingdoms wanted removed despite some of them having been there for a century. The conflict over these lands eventually leads to the creation of a new, neutral kingdom which we know will eventually transform into The Legend of Korra's Republic City.

The Legend of Korra, which takes place 70 years after the events of Avatar, previously featured the characters of Katara, Zuko and Toph in their old age (Sokka having died off-screen and Aang, of course, having died to allow Korra to be born). That show featured several brief flashbacks to a time period when Aang and the gang were in their 30s and 40s, which left fans eager to see more.

The new film is in production at Flying Bark Productions, with DiMartino and Konietzko on board as producers, with Eric Coleman and Lauren Montgomery directing. It's not been confirmed yet if the original voice cast is returning. Nickelodeon, Paramount and Avatar Studios are collaborating on the project.

The new Avatar film is the first of several new projects in the setting coming up. Nickelodeon and Paramount are also developing a new animated series and two further films, although nothing about their setting or characters have been confirmed, despite speculation that the second film would focus on Zuko and the third on the next Avatar after Korra.

Netflix also wrapped up filming of a live-action remake of the first season of Avatar some months ago. That series is expected to debut later in 2023.

The Legend of Korra - Book I: Air

The Hundred Year War ended when Avatar Aang defeated the Fire Lord Ozai and brought peace to the Four Nations. Aang and Katara's son, Zuko, founded the United Republic of Nations where people from all over the world could live together in peace. Its capital, Republic City, became a beacon of hope and integration for all of humanity.

Seventy years on from the end of the war, Korra, the new Avatar, arrives in Republic City to begin learning the art of airbending from Tenzin, Aang and Katara's son. Born and raised in the Southern Water Tribe, Korra is initially overwhelmed by the bright lights and perceived glamour of the city. But there are inequalities and simmering tensions in the city, stoked by the enigmatic Amon who desires a world where magic-benders no longer exist. When he reveals that he has the power to strip a person's abilities from them, he becomes the biggest threat the city has ever seen...a threat that only the Avatar can defeat.

The Legend of Korra is the sequel series to Avatar: The Last Airbender, arguably the greatest slice of western animation of the past twenty years. The task of crafting a sequel to such a beloved show was daunting, but the producers have risen to the occasion by doing the only thing they could: take the sequel in a very different direction from the original series.

Whilst Avatar was more of a traditional adventure story featuring Aang and his adventures travelling from place to place, Korra is much more locked into the location of Republic City. Heavily influenced by both New York and Shanghai in the 1920s, Republic City takes influences from history, retrofuturism and steampunk. It's a towering collection of skyscrapers, sporting arenas, industrial parks and cars (sorry, 'Satomobiles') where fortunes can be made and lost overnight. It's clearly the same world as seen in Avatar, but the technology we saw beginning to develop in that series (such as airships and steam vessels) has moved forwards dramatically. The show makes use of these stylings in various ways, from the 1920s-influenced soundtrack to the cinema news reel which plays at the start of each episode and acts as a recap of the story so far.  Moving away from the setting of the original series was a clever idea and provides not just a great backdrop for the new series, but also (via flashback) brief opportunities to see the later adventures of Aang and his friends as they built up this society from scratch.

The setting is beautifully-depicted, but characterisation is a more mixed bag. Korra is a sympathetic and winning heroine, even if she does settle into the 'brash and headstrong teenager' trope a little too easily. Mako and Bolin, the pro-bending brothers who become Korra's key allies, are more standard archetypes: the square-jawed hero and his wise-cracking sidekick. The non-bending member of the 'new Team Avatar', Asami Sato, may be the most interesting character of the bunch but she gets relatively little development compared to the others. The supporting cast is better-handled. Tenzin is a stoic, serious man clearly overburdened by the weight of his late father's expectations but who opens up a little to Korra. His kids are played for comic relief, but provide quite a few excellent laughs as the series progresses. Another key supporting character is Lin Beifong, Toph's daughter and the city's chief of police, who starts off being thoroughly unlikable but grows into a more relatable character over the course of the season. The enigmatic Amon, with his smoothly threatening voice and blank-faced mask, is also an effective villain.

As with Avatar, the show can be watched and enjoyed by kids and adults on different levels. Kids will likely respond to the action-focused storylines and cute animal characters, whilst adults will likely appreciate the allusions (and even satire) to our own history and society. The inequalities in the setting, based on both the growth of capitalism and the fact that benders are almost able always to get jobs whilst non-benders suffer (fuelling Amon's revolution), are tackled head-on in a surprisingly mature way for a kid's show. However, the socio-economic tensions emerge organically from the setting and its development from the original series rather then being developed too incongruously. This extends to magic as well, with the new forms of bending discovered towards the end of the original show (metalbending and energybending) both playing key new roles in this series and being developed logically.

The show suffers a little from being restricted to just 12 episodes in its first season (compared to Avatar's 20 episodes per season). Story arcs that the viewer might have expected to last a bit longer are compressed into just an episode or two, and sometimes the pacing feels off. This lack of time also means that some elements - such as the size of Amon's forces and the firepower available to it - feel a little unconvincing. More damaging is the decision to base the season's main emotional arc around a love triangle between Mako, Asami and Korra. With more time to develop, this could have made for a more effective background element (much as how romance was handled in the original series), but here it's much more front-and-centre and dominates two episodes to their detriment. The limited screentime also means some characters (like General Iroh, Zuko's grandson who amusingly shares his grandfather's voice actor) aren't really fleshed out at all and just show up, do some stuff and disappear without much being learned about them.

Still, the flipside of the fewer episodes means that there's less hanging about and each episode feels busier, developing multiple storylines in tandem as well as building up the setting and the backdrop. It could all have exploded into an incoherent mess, but the writers manage the chaos quite well.

Despite some flaws, The Legend of Korra - Book I: Air (****) is a worthy follow-up to Avatar: The Last Airbender. It tries to be different whilst also exploring the consequences of the preceding series and manages to pull both off. The characters aren't quite a match for their predecessors, but this remains a highly watchable and engaging animated series. It is available now on DVD (UK, USA) and Blu-Ray (UK, USA). Book II: Spirit will be released in 2014.

New LEGEND OF KORRA trailer

There's a new trailer out for The Last Airbender: The Legend of Korra, the sequel series to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Presumably the 'Avatar' bit has been dropped for James Cameron-related reasons.

The steampunky/faux-Victorian tech angle looks good, though the goofy announcer is seriously annoying. It also looks like they are emphasising the humour in this trailer over the more dramatic stuff.

The Legend of Korra is set approximately seventy-five years after the previous series and charts the adventures of Korra, the latest incarnation of the Avatar, someone who is able to use all four elemental forms of magic (most magic-users - 'benders' in the setting's unfortunate parlance - can only use one). The series is set in Republic City, where technology and science exist alongside magic, and the principle storyline revolves around an anti-bending society known as the Equalists attempting to stamp out all use of magic.

The series will initially comprise a twelve-episode first season, with a fourteen-episode second season already in production. The series is expected to debut on Nickelodeon in the USA this summer.

More info on new AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER TV series

The Last Airbender: The Legend of Korra, the sequel series to the excellent animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, has an air date: the series will debut in the USA on Nickelodeon in 2012. We also have our first look at Korra, the titular central character:

Korra lashing out with destructive magic, possibly having just sat through M. Night Shyamalan's film version of the original series.

The new series picks up the storyline seventy years after the events of Avatar. Aang has passed away and Korra has become the new Avatar. Having already mastered fire, water and earthbending, she travels to the steampunk-eqsque Republic City to seek out Aang's son, Tenzin, to learn the art of airbending. However, there is widespread distrust and paranoia over magic-users developing amongst the population, leading to civil unrest.

Originally mooted as a 12-episode mini-series, Nickelodeon have extended the first run to 26 half-hour episodes. Rather than a multi-year arc, the new series will apparently adopt the 24 model of having a different, over-arcing storyline each season (suggesting the project may be evolving into an ongoing series rather than a limited one). Original series producers Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko are on board to write every episode, whilst vocal talent will include familiar Avatar stalwarts such as Dante Basco (Zuko) and Dee Bradley Baker (Appa and Momo) in new roles, as well as relatively high-profile actors like J.K. Simmons (J. Jonah Jameson in the Raimi Spider-Man movies) playing Tenzin, Daniel Dae Kim (Jin from Lost) as Hiroshi Sato and Lance Henrickson (Bishop from Alien movies, amongst many other roles) in an undisclosed military role.

Avatar: The Last Airbender was a great show. Whilst it's sad to say goodbye to the old crew, it'll be interesting to see the world explored further in the new series.

Brief updates

At Comic-Con, Patrick Rothfuss reported that The Wise Man's Fear has come in just short of 400,000 words, making it larger than, for example, any book in the Wheel of Time or Malazan series. He remains very confident of the planned March/April release slot.

A sinister hooded figure, made even more mysterious by being painted very, very small and put in a location where he looks like he's assessing the mould damage.

The new Avatar series, The Legend of Korra, is apparently only planned to be a 12-episode mini-series at the moment rather than an ongoing serial.

At the Battlestar Galactica panel, several actors and one of the writers hinted that we might be seeing the BSG characters again in some form. Meanwhile, the second half of Caprica's first season has been pushed back to January 2011. SyFy are apparently still debating whether to renew the series.

StarCraft II is released tomorrow. The United States defence department would not be drawn if the current naval exercises off the coast of the Korean peninsular were planned specifically to deter a North Korean invasion as millions of South Koreans skive off work to play the game, leaving the country dangerously distracted by Zerg rushes and mastering the new units.

Filming of Season 1 of Game of Thrones commences today in Belfast and will continue through to January 2011, with transmission a few months later. Good luck to the cast and crew!

AVATAR: THE LEGEND OF KORRA announced

Nickelodeon have announced Avatar: The Legend of Korra, a new animated 12-episode mini-series which will serve as a sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender. The name seems to be inspired by the name that the previous series went under in the UK and other countries, The Legend of Aang.

Staring moodily at a distant city from what appears to the be the top of a tiny bridge. Awesome.

The new series will be set in a different time period to the original series and focuses on the emergence of a new avatar (someone who can use all four of the elemental forms of magic), a girl named Korra. The single screenshot revealed hints at a slightly more technologically-advanced time period, with much taller buildings than in the original series, although the traditional Asian influence remains strong. The accompanying press-speak suggests that the series will build on the mythology of the original series with a hotheaded female lead. The series will debut in 2011.

To reiterate, this is a sequel to the excellent, possibly classic, animated series, not the M. Night Shyamalan movie.

UPDATE
More detailed information has emerged. The Legend of Korra is set seventy years after the conclusion of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Korra, a member of the Southern Water Tribe, is already the Avatar when the series starts and has mastered three of the four elements, leaving only airbending unmastered. She is looking for Tenzin, the son of Aang (and presumably Katara), who will teach this skill to her. A principle location will be Republic City, a metropolis powered by steampunk technology which is riddled with crime and where the people, a mix from all four nations, are becoming disenchanted with magic-users in general.

This sounds more hopeful. A rebellion of the 'normal' people against all of the magic-users and more focus on one location sounds like good moves, throwing up good storyline possibilities.