Netflix Puts Everything on the Line With Avatar, But It Got Competition
Since Stranger Things season 5 will most likely be the last, Netflix chose Avatar as their new big thing. Apparently, there's even more to it — and Netflix is not the only one who wants a piece of this franchise.
Avatar: The Last Airbender started as an animated show on Nickelodeon all the way back in 2005 and had three seasons.
Despite the show ending over 15 years ago, it's still popular with the audience, and its incredibly successful recent debut on Netflix confirmed it once again.
For Netflix, the Avatar franchise is a huge bet: they've already had a live-action TV series in the making for quite some time, but now, it's success has become crucial for the company since Stranger Things are apparently ending after season 5.
To ensure the Avatar series' great launch, Netflix postponed the release for one more year: the show was supposed to come out this year, but the studio decided to take more time and polish their new project.
This is a wise decision considering how much depends on the remake's success now — and considering that Netflix has reportedly already poured tons of money into their new Avatar.
But Netflix is not the only one developing a live-action based on this franchise.
Nickelodeon created Avatar Studios — and those guys are now actively working on an entire movie following the adventures of Aang and his friends!
While we still don't know what Netflix's Avatar will be about, the Avatar Studios recently shed some light on their project. Nickelodeon's live-action will feature the main characters from the original animated series — but in their thirties.
This gives us a nice idea of the timeline: the movie will obviously follow the events that took place after The Legend of Aang but prior to The Legend of Korra.
If we were to speculate on the subject, we'd say that the movie's finale will lay the foundation for the series — but which one?
The Avatar movie can either lead into The Legend of Korra storyline, showing us Aang's death that allowed the Avatar to be reborn as Korra, or be somehow connected with the TV series Netflix is currently developing.
This much remains up to discussion and largely depends on whether Nickelodeon and Netflix plan on collaborating in this regard.
We'll have to wait and see what comes out of this peculiar situation, but so far all we can see is two large companies working on live-action remakes of the same franchise — and we don't even know if the two will be connected.