Movie Make-out

M. Night Shyamalan’s live-action adaptation of the animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender has received an official release date. According to Variety, Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies announced the film, re-titled The Last Airbender to avoid confusion with James Cameron’s Avatar, will see release on July 2, 2010. It is the first film to lay claim to that date so far.

Shyamalan, whose film The Happening will be released on June 13, tells Empire Online that he was drawn to the Buddhist and Hindu aspects of the show, noting, “When I realized that is what it was, it really drew me as the template for putting storytelling on a new level. There is a kind of thread that connects Star Wars and The Matrix — the first one. That same thread is in this story, about a forgotten belief system, or the illusion of the world now.”

He describes the plot as being

in a place where there are four tribes of people. And these people each have people within their tribe that have mastery over one element: water, earth, fire or air. They all live in a balance and harmony and once every generation there is born an individual who can bend — that is manipulate — all four of those elements and thereby keep a balance between all. They are kind of a Buddha figure to some extent. The story is about how, in this particular time, this avatar is born into the airbenders and disappears. Then all hell breaks loose and the fire nation basically commits genocide and eradicates the air tribe in the hopes of killing the avatar and taking over control of everything. This child then re-emerges, which is the beginning of our story. He reappears having been frozen in the ice — there is a whole story about how that happens — a hundred years later and this world is all fucked up and he is the last airbender, but he doesn’t want this job. He’s forced into the position of putting the world back together again. It actually has a lot of Shakespearean overtones to it. There’s lots of family angst, and fathers denying sons in different storylines.

The film, the first of a planned trilogy, will be shot in Philadelphia and Greenland. In keeping with the series, which was heavily influenced by Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle), Shyamalan is aiming to “make a live-action version of a Miyazaki film.” Reading the interview at Empire Online, it is clear that he has a deep reverence for the source material. And I have to say, despite how bad The Village was, I have high hopes that the mind behind Unbreakable will lead this project to success.

Related posts: Trailer Watch: Vexille, Redbelt, The Happening (updated)