Fans of Avatar, your moment is coming! Nickelodeon Animation and Paramount Animation said a long time ago that Avatar: The Last Airbender wasn’t over yet. With new projects in the works, it was only a matter of time before we found out when the animated hit would put out its first new episode since Legend of Korra ended. We now know when the new Avatar movie will come out.
Variety says that the next Avatar movie will come out on October 10, 2025. Nickelodeon Animation, Paramount Animation, and the brand-new Avatar Studios will all work on the untitled project. It should get a wide release around the same time as the new SpongeBob movie coming out in May 2015.
Avatar Comeback
According to comicbook, If you’ve been keeping up with Avatar, you know that the animated series made a big comeback when the COVID-19 pandemic first started. Once the show started streaming on Netflix, it was back in the news, and in 2021, Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko started Avatar Studios. The team said it would make new animated projects set in the Avatar Universe, and they weren’t kidding.
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Fans were told in June of this year that three Avatar movies were being made. We don’t know much about the movie’s plot, but we do know that the director of the 2025 movie is in charge of it. The movie will be directed by Lauren Montgomery, who has worked on hits like Voltron: Legendary Defender. Along with DiMartino and Konietzko, Eric Coleman will be a producer.
Adapting the Comics
In 2012, Dark Horse Comics started putting out Avatar: The Last Airbender comics that picked up where the TV show left off. They not only filled in the gaps between ATLA and Korra, but they also went deeper into the world, filled in backstories, and even answered the biggest question left unanswered at the end of the series: what happened to Zuko’s mom?
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Any of these stories would make a good movie or miniseries, but the one about Zuko’s mom would be the easiest to turn into a movie or miniseries. Many new people who watch the show don’t know about the comic, so it would be a great chance to show such an important part of ATLA’s story.
Koh the Face Stealer
Koh is an ancient spirit who can steal the face of anyone who shows him any emotion. He is without a doubt the scariest thing in the ATLA universe. Aang faced him down in a memorable way and just barely got away with his face. Since then, he has been mentioned in other ATLA stories.
Still, this creature is mostly a mystery, and a movie that dug deeper into him would make a great bad guy. He did tell Aang that they would meet again, after all. (This technically happened in an online game, but most of Koh’s appearance in that game has been lost to the sands of Internet time.)
We don’t have to know or see everything about his past (a little mystery is good), but the chance to see more of him is too good to pass up. Aang doesn’t even have to be the one to face him. When Koh said “we’ll meet again,” he could have been talking to any Avatar. Korra might meet him or even an Avatar in the future.
The Further (Queer) Adventures of Korra and Asami
Korra and Asami walked hand in hand through the spirit portal at the end of The Legend of Korra, and it was later confirmed that they were a couple. We’ve seen some of this in the Korra comics, which, if turned into movies or miniseries, would be great, but getting a full series where Korra and Asam explore the Avatar world and face new challenges?
Breaking from SDCC: The first Avatar Studios movie coming to theaters in 2024 will no longer be about Kyoshi, but rather Aang! And, exclusive from Avatar News: it will be set in a time period where Team Avatar are young adults! pic.twitter.com/RNfblv94Y3
— Avatar News (@AvatarNews_) July 22, 2022
That would be a great show on its own (especially after the last two AMAZING seasons), and it would also be a chance to show that Korra and Asami are gay.
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Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) characters are still not shown enough, especially in animation. Seeing LGBT characters in such a popular franchise would be great. We don’t even need them to be about the same age as they were on the show. Let’s hear about these two’s 40-year-old gay, married lives!
A Whole New Avatar
Even though it would be easy for any new Avatar media to just tell more stories about characters we already know, Avatar Studios has the chance to take the story far beyond what we saw in ATLA or Korra. Remember how after ATLA, The Legend of Korra jumped 70 years into the future and the world’s technology was similar to that of the 1920s?
What if we went back in time to a world that was similar to the 1970s? Or what the heck, go on! Imagine if it was a mix of science fiction and fantasy, and we got SPACE AVATAR. Yeah, bending asteroids and breathing in space with air bubbles.
It would be a risk, but new Avatar media shouldn’t rely on nostalgia alone. It needs to move forward to make sure it will be around in the future, and a new generation of kids (or teens, depending on who the show is aimed at) deserves their own Avatar series.
