The first of the new Avatar: The Last Airbender animated films will focus on the original gang – but in adulthood. The Paramount Panel at Cinema Con revealed that Aang, Katara, Sokka, Zuko and Toph all appear to be in their late 20s and early 30s. When the movie comes out October 10, 2025, the characters will be the same age as many of the people who grew up watching it. Man, time passes!
This new animated film is the first of three films added to Nickolodeon’s new Avatar Studios banner. Lauren Montgomery, who worked on the original show as well as Netflix’s Voltron: legendary defenderis set to direct this first episode.
We’ve known about the upcoming Avatar movies since last year, when Paramount announced that the original creators would be working on new movies. This is not to be confused with the upcoming live-action Netflix adaptation. Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, creators of the original series, left the Netflix version, citing creative differences. But both DiMartino and Konietzko return to produce the new animated films and expand the universe in the same way it was first created.
The original animation avatar series aired on Nickelodeon from 2005 to 2008. The show takes place in a fantasy world where certain individuals can harness the four elements with specialized martial arts moves. The show follows the titular Avatar, the only person capable of mastering all four elemental styles. The Avatar is reborn once every generation and is meant to maintain balance between the four elements and their bearers, but at the start of the series, the Avatar has been missing from the world for a century. Reincarnated as a courageous 12-year-old named Aang, the Avatar and his friends must face the tyrannical Fire Nation, who are waging a devastating war against the rest of the world.
The original Avatar: The Last Airbender and the sequel series, The Legend of Korraare currently streaming on Netflix.