The Last Airbender: Six-year trilogy plan is unveiled

IT'S BEEN revealed that director M. Night Shyamalan is already working on the follow-up to next year's The Last Airbender, a live-action adaptation of the animated fantasy series.

The first film, starring 12-year-old Noah Ringer as lead character Aang and Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel as evil Prince Zuko, will hit screens on July 2, 2010.

In a world divided into four nations (Earth, Air, Fire and Water), Aang is the only person able to master all four elements and, with the help of two friends, he tries to stop Zuko and the Fire Nation's plan to enslave all the other elemental tribes.

Producer Frank Marshall has now spoken about how they are moving quickly to put together a trilogy.

He said the films would have to be written and shot separately, rather than back to back like the Lord of the Rings series, but they needed to proceed quickly.

Marshall told Starlog: "We're shooting them one at a time, because they're being written one at a time. Night is now working on the script for the second movie, but he hasn't had time to write the second or third ones. He's looking at the arc of all three.

"One of the things we'll be doing is using the sets, ships and elements for each different nation in this film and incorporating them into movies two and three.

"We're not waiting. There just isn't enough time. Night will finish this movie, then the script and then we'll prepare for the next one. I think it'll probably happen over six years."

Clearly, they will have to get moving on the other films as soon as possible, before the actors become too old for their roles.

Ringer, who makes his movie debut in this project, said: "I knew about the cartoon three years before. Ever since I've been shaving my head, everybody has called me Aang. I watched the show because everybody would tell me, 'You have to watch this cartoon. He looks just like you!'

"The movie is definitely different [from the TV series], but if we would've done the same thing as the cartoon, what would be exciting about that? It's fun to change that and do something new."

Patel, in his first role since the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, said: "Zuko is a boy, and he's struggling to impress his father and trying to get his honor and love back."

"And then there's Shaun Toub, who plays my uncle, and who treats Zuko like a son. Like in life, you take your anger out on the people you love the most, and Zuko sort of neglects his uncle because he's on this one-track mission to find this boy. It makes it really interesting. They have a good dynamic: This naïve boy who acts on aggression all of the time, and then you have this wise, older uncle who is like the calm within the storm."

Shyamalan said: "The Last Airbender will be a very entertaining movie, a really fun summer film. But underneath that, it's serious and talks about genocide, balance, our connection to the planet and all those things that interest me if you've seen the other movies that I've made. It felt like an important film."

The first images from the film, including Noah Ringer as Aang (pictured at top) were released in May (see my earlier article here) and stirred up some negative comments about changes to the characters and the ethnicity of the casting choices, as you will see in the comments on that earlier article.

The recently released teaser trailer for the film is included below.