Avatar: The Last Airbender Boss Talks Adapting Animated Series Into Hourlong Episodes

Avatar: The Last Airbender showrunner Albert Kim is opening up about adapting the fan-favorite animated series into the upcoming live-action Netflix series.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Kim discussed how the Netflix series approaches adapting certain story elements from the original Nickelodeon show.

The first season of Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender consisted of 20 chapters that are fairly episodic in nature. The following two seasons are somewhat more plot-driven; however, each episode is only approximately 24 minutes in length, thus meaning Kim and the rest of the Netflix crew had to get somewhat creative when figuring out how to pace an eight-episode season with 60-minute-long chapters.

“We don’t start the show the way the animated series starts,” Kim said. “That was a conscious decision to show people this is not the animated series.”

He added, “We had to sometimes unravel storylines and remix them in a new way to make sense for a serialized drama.”

According to Entertainment Weekly, some of the Netflix episodes will be a “strict one-to-one adaptation,” while others will be more “remixed.”

Who stars in Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender?

Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender stars Gordon Cormier as Aang, Kiawentiio as Katara, an Ousley as Sokka, Dallas Liu as Prince Zuko, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as General Iroh, and Daniel Day Kim as Fire Lord Ozai.

This isn’t the first time that Avatar: The Last Airbender has been adapted into live-action. In 2010, M. Night Shyamalan made his controversial The Last Airbender movie. The movie ended up making $319.7 million at the global box office off a budget of $150 million, but it was widely panned by fans and critics alike.

While Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender was heavily criticized for casting white actors in an East Asian and Inuit-influenced world (among other casting controversies), Kim said he was drawn to the Netflix adaptation because of its roots in Asian culture. He explained, “That was incredibly rare. It still is. A live-action version meant setting new benchmarks for representation by featuring an all-Asian and Indigenous cast.”

Avatar: The Last Airbender Season One releases on Netflix on February 22, 2024.