Air-bender to the big screen!

The Signs, The Happening, The Sixth Sense… is M. Night Shayamalan’s gonna be awesome in creating The Avatar for the big screen?

Avatar

We are like elements—water, air, fire and earth. When merge together, we create something great with life, we carve artistic masterpiece and breathe life with our imaginations. As Kuris animators, selected artists with flair for arts and animation in Iloilo City, we learned to combine our thoughts and passion. As a team of hodge-podge distinct personalities, gifts and reveries we compliment each other with a lot of reasons. Not only our friendship and trainings in 2D animation made us better but our conviction to share something significant in the expanding animation trend in the country and appreciation of Ilonggo culture makes us prefect dreamers. After all, everything started as a dream for us. Even if our big expectation in animation didn’t work out so well presently, we are hopeful that we can continue what we started by holding on to each other. For us, it’s the secret of our team--- we know how to combine our gifts and merge our passion into one force.

Inspired by Nicktoon’s sensational animated series that merge both Western and Manga concept—The Avatar: The Last Airbender, it tells the epical story of a boy named Ang, the last heir to the supreme destiny of Avatar, a master of four elements in an alternate earth divided into four kingdoms—Fire, Water, Earth and Air. He is the last hope of a planet enslaved by the Fire nation who wanted to take control of everything. He woke up from a hundred of years of deep slumber in an iceberg, Ang must travel the world with Katara (the girl who saved her from his deep ice-slumber) and his brother to free the three enslaved nations. But before facing his greatest opponent, the Fire King, Ang must learn to master the four elements before he becomes the Avatar—savior of his planet. Under his belt, he’s already a born-air bender as the last citizen of Air nation which means he knows how to use the power of air. But when he masters the four elements, he unleashes a force as powerful as the Phoenix (he might rival Jean Grey for that one, hehe).The animated series is a worldwide hit and became a pop sensation among kids.

In fact, The Avatar has been our inspiration to create our animated project—The BEQUEST: Origin of Dinagyang. We were so impressed with the way the animators created Ang. So we patterned some of Ang’s animated movements and style to create Nino, the main character of BEQUEST. We wanted to make him our little Avatar (of course, less the elemental-bending powers coz’ he’s an ordinary kid in the streets of Iloilo City). But the inspiration worked well and we made it good.

But here’s great news---The ultimate elemental kid is coming to the big screen. Yes, Nicktoons in collaboration with Paramount Pictures and M. Night Shayamalan, the brilliant writer/director of mega-hit films The Sixth Sense, The Happening and The Signs is persistent to turn the animated series into a potential blockbuster trilogy film starting in 2010.

Whatever will happen, rest assure that we really love The Avatar and the way it inspired us to chase our dream as amateur animators. The secret elements in keeping our dream alive are friendship and passion. Watch out, the Avatar is coming soon!

Anyway, here’s a teaser article about the upcoming film we got from www.ComingSoon.net

Avatar, the movie?

M. Night Shyamalan's new R-rated thriller The Happening is hitting theaters this Friday, and as he makes the rounds to promote the film he's getting hit with a lot of questions about the upcoming live action Avatar: The Last Airbender movie. Currently the flick is being called simply The Last Airbender so as to not conflict with director James “Titanic” Cameron's upcoming movie Avatar.

Shyamalan has reportedly been working closely with Avatar: The Last Airbender creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko to craft the movie, which he plans to be the first of a trilogy with each movie following one season of the series. Though Shyamalan has long received criticism for his particular brand of storytelling and for the films that followed his smash hit The Sixth Sense, the news that the original Avatar creators are involved and that Shyamalan seems to have huge respect for the story is encouraging news.

"It was just the story. I just loved the story," Shyamalan told ComingSoon.net when asked why he wanted to make the film. "I loved the characters in the story and I felt like I could be me inside this larger canvas of this very long-form movie. I think it inherently had kind of family issues and serious larger topics--at the center, genocide--all kinds of stuff. Cultural differences at the center. It has Buddhism, Hinduism, things I'm interested in. It does have martial arts in a way that's not bang bang bang, but more about the person mastering yourself and the things that I love. I took martial arts for a long time. A ten-year-old at the center. That point of view felt good, like I could do my thing."

Pre-production is well underway for the film and Shyamalan recently unveiled a rough trailer to insiders. The trailer showed concept art for each of the series' four nations that is reportedly very similar to the animated series' art style, and it was revealed that filming would take place in such exotic locales as Greenland and Vietnam. Sets are planned to built in August and casting is happening now, with Shyamalan hinting that he believes he's found the next big star.

Already completed for the film are the storyboards, which detail the movie beginning to end and include almost 20 epic fight scenes. But Shyamalan doesn't want the martial arts to be there just for excitement, he wants the combat to be an extension of the characterization.

"The great thing about it is it's almost like they don't ever really touch each other based in this world,” he told ComingSoon.net about his vision for the fights. “They kind of do a form of manifesting something and then it comes at the other person and they manifest something. It'll be great to do it as extensions of what the characters are feeling, and there'll be much more CG."

There is talk of Shyamalan comparing his ideas to the Star Wars films and how he wants the mythology of the Avatar movies to gain as many fans as those George Lucas classics. While that might be overreaching just a bit, it's good to see that Shyamalan is excited about the project. Though the idea of condensing all of Avatar's first season into one two hour movie seems daunting, so far Shyamalan seems nothing but excited about the prospect.

The Last Airbender is scheduled to be released in theaters on July 2, 2010.