Shyamalan hopes to turn The Last Airbender into a franchise

The Last Airbender

“For the last 10 years, I’ve been working in a cottage industry of the supernatural,” said Shyamalan. “And I’ve always had my eye on doing a franchise.”

M. Night Shyamalan envisions The Last Airbender as a trilogy, saying that the Nickelodeon series interested him because it lent itself to “long-form storytelling” and encompassed areas of personal interest: martial arts, mysticism and spirituality. Airing from 2005 to 2008, Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender revolves around the adventures of Aang, a young avatar who controls the elements of water, fire, air and earth and holds the power to restore peace to a war-torn world.

The Last Airbender presents quite a risk for Paramount Pictures. With a production cost of $150 million and a blockbuster-size $130-million marketing budget, the flick is more than twice as expensive as any of Shyamalan’s previous eight films. Thus, leading some to question Paramount’s wisdom in handing him such a large-scale project, but Paramount Chief Executive Brad Grey said, “Like every filmmaker, Night has had his hits and misses, but I believed in his vision and that he could execute it,” Grey said, adding “It’s a bold step because he had to create a potential new family franchise.”

Paramount, owned by Viacom Inc. and a Nickelodeon sister company, fully financed the movie. The Last Airbender also signals Paramount’s latest push to utilize Viacom’s TV series from Nickelodeon for movies, as it has done with SpongeBob Squarepants and Rugrats. The movie opens July 1st.