M. Night Shyamalan is in the midst of adapting the American anime Avatar: The Last Airbender into a projected trilogy of films. (Which seems wildly optimistic.) I’ve been told over and over again that, as things go, Avatar isn’t bad, but all I know is that it’s about Aang, a kid who can manipulate wind and weather, and his quest to stop one evil nation from taking over three not-evil nations. Aang is played by 12-year old Noah Ringer, while his chief nemesis Zuko, who controls fire, is Slumdog Millionaire‘s Dev Patel. Do you think he calls Freida Pinto to ask what Woody Allen and Julien Schnabel are like? Maybe he asks for cell phone photos from meetings with those guys.
The first photos from the first film are out, courtesy of USA Today, and as a Dragonball: Evolution fan project, it’s looking pretty good. The paper notes that Ringer is both a martial artist and a big Avatar fan, so the casting makes perfect sense! He does, indeed, look a lot like the character: short, bald, has a staff. That’s the sort of thing that’s difficult to find.
