A man accused of posting the entirety of an upcoming “Avatar: The Last Airbender” animated feature was arrested in Singapore. The 26-year-old suspect could face up to seven years in prison and a $50,000 fine for stealing and dispersing the film, “The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender.”
The footage began going around in mid-April as social media users started sharing the full follow-up film to the original animated “Avatar: The Last Airbender” series. The film, which features Team Avatar as young adults in the early space between “The Last Airbender” and “The Legend of Korra,” was set to release on Paramount+ on Oct. 9.
First reported by The Straits Times, police stated that the man accessed restricted servers to download the film and leak it online. A device belonging to the man was recovered with a copy of “The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender.” The maximum punishments for these crimes would be seven years in prison and/or a fine $50,000 fine.
The leak became the next step in an unfortunate life for the feature “The Last Airbender” film. This will only be the second movie made based on the franchise (following M. Night Shyamalan’s critically panned live-action adaptation), and the first set in the original cartoon’s canon. “The Legend of Aang” was originally planned for a theatrical release before being unceremoniously moved to Paramount+.
Now, the film’s creators have had to see their work viewed for the first time on social media (in some cases, with clips ripped out of context) after the leak. No trailer or footage of the film had been officially shared by Paramount before the leak.
“We worked on the aang movie for years with the expectation that’d we’d get to celebrate all of our hard work in theaters.. just to see people unceremoniously leak the film and pass our shots around on twitter like candy,” said animator Julia Schoel on X. “I don’t like seeing people use paramount’s awful decision to remove the movie from theaters to justify leaking it. I totally understand folks not wanting to pay for/support paramount+. but pirating the movie after its release would have at least been better than this. This is incredibly disrespectful to all of the hard work the artists put in.”
“The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender” will stream on Paramount+ on October. 9.
