Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Creators Leave Production of Netflix’s Live-Action Remake
Concept Art by John Staub/Netflix
Avatar: The Last Airbender creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko have both decided to step down from their positions as showrunners and executive producers for Netflix’s upcoming The Last Airbender live-action remake series, DiMartino shared in his personal blog today. The culprit: those pesky creative differences.
DiMartino and Konietzko actually left the project in June 2020, after two years of having done development work on the show. Netflix officially announced the project in September 2018, with production planned to start in 2019. However, they then delayed it to 2020, and a little particle with spikes on it delayed everything involving multiple people in one space shortly thereafter.
“Look, things happen,” DiMartino wrote in the post. “Productions are challenging. Unforeseen events arise. Plans have to change. And when those things have happened at other points during my career, I try to be like an Air Nomad and adapt. I do my best to go with the flow, no matter what obstacle is put in my way. But even an Air Nomad knows when it’s time to cut their losses and move on.”
As expected, DiMartino doesn’t ever go into what exactly those creative differences were, but it can be gleaned that something about the show, whether it was its script, casting, direction or something else entirely, wasn’t to either DiMartino’s or Konietzko’s liking.
Co-creator Konietzko had slightly harsher words about how they reached the decision to leave.