Shyamalan Wants His Own Avatar
Filed under: Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Deals, Disney, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Family Films, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand
After dissing Disney and handing Warner Bros. the box office flop that was Lady in the Water, M. Night Shyamalan is packing his bags and heading to Paramount -- or, more specifically, MTV Films and Nick Movies. The writer-director has just inked a three-picture deal to adapt Nick TV's animated kiddie show Avatar into a big-screen, live-action trilogy (or shall I say, potential trilogy). Oh yes, and this comes only a few hours after Fox announced that it had officially greenlit James Cameron's Avatar ... though the only thing both projects have in common is the same title.
If it all goes through, this will be the first time since 1999's Stuart Little that Shyamalan takes on a project that is not based on his own original story (Shyamalan adapted Little from the E.B. White book, but did not direct), and only the second time the filmmaker has decided to work on kid-friendly material (unless you count his so-called bedtime story, Lady in the Water). While I'm not familiar with the toon, Avatar: The Last Airbender (the full title of both the show and the film) is apparently set in an "Asian-influenced fantasy world" and revolves around an irresponsible, care-free Avatar who is placed in charge of stopping the Fire Nation from wreaking havoc on the Water, Earth and Air nations.
It sounds wonderful, but it's not that easy -- see, both Fox and Paramount claim they own the name Avatar. The latter says they registered the name with the MPAA, while the former went all schoolyard bully and noted: "We own the movie title 'Avatar.' There won't be another film called 'Avatar' coming from anyplace." Hell yeah! Something tells me that Fox rep threw in a little "Booyah!" afterwards, yet Variety decided it might be best to leave it out. It's also important to note that Shyamalan is also shopping other projects (the man does have an ego and a rep greater than twelve Fire Nations combined), and so Avatar: The One Where M. Night Bites the Bullet and Takes It Up the You Know Where might not be the next Shyamalan epic to go into production.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-09-2007 @ 11:12AM
Ralph said...
I was just thinking how great a film franchise this story would be -- it's already got 4 built-in films (the "chapters" -- water, earth, etc. -- underway in the cartoon series).
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1-09-2007 @ 11:38AM
Jim Kosmicki said...
this is a well-written series. My kids love it, and the few episodes that I've watched have already been solidly written, with good themes, solid plotlines, nice characterization, etc. I would think that the current writers should be involved at some point, with M. Night being the "get" to catch the PR at this point.
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1-09-2007 @ 11:47AM
Vince said...
Erik,
Dude! What did M Night do to deserve such spite? Besides wasting some of your time watching his movies. He certainly has not maintained the success since his first film but surely better than average in most his efforts.
I for one always enjoy his efforts even though most fall short. Can'y judge his ego or personality other than to recommend he hire more actors rather than appear so much in his films.
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1-09-2007 @ 12:58PM
kel said...
This is very cool news. Avatar (the cartoon) is a great series (I'm surprised it's on Nick) and M Night, in spite of LITW, is a really good storyteller. Plus this may allow him to get out of the rut that he's put himself in, where everyone now expects him to put a twist at the end of the story.
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1-09-2007 @ 2:50PM
Rich said...
My GF's kid loves this show and I will admit, I do too. It's one of the best series I've seen on TV. Its great for the kids and interesting enough for the adults to watch.
When I saw the title for this article, I cringed. M Night is a washed up ego maniac. After Unbreakable (which I think is his best movie) he's done nothing but overrated crap. The only saving grace for this combination is that he didn't write it and hopefully they won't let him do any script changes.
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1-09-2007 @ 7:03PM
ZenKimchi said...
I recently discovered this show--as in one week ago. And it's easily become one of my favorite shows. It's up there with BSG in my "shows I can't miss" list. The writing adds a good dose of biting humor to an already compelling adventure story with well defined three dimensional characters.
This is the REAL Avatar.
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