Avatar: Legend Of Korra

[Evil McBadGuy]

New Avatar animation for 2011

LOS ANGELES — A sequel to Nickelodeon's "Avatar: The Last Airbender" is in the works.

The channel said Wednesday the new animated TV series will premiere in 2011. It has the working title, "The Legend of Korra."

Nickelodeon says the series will build on the "mythology" of the original "The Last Airbender" series, which inspired this summer's live-action movie from filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan (SHAH-muh-lahn).

The "Legend of Korra" is from the creator-producers of "Avatar: The Last Airbender."

Nickelodeon executive Brown Johnson says the new series will focus on a teenage girl avatar named Korra. Brown describes her as hotheaded, independent and "ready to take on the world."

"Avatar: The Last Airbender" has ranked among the highest-rate series on the Nickelodeon and Nicktoons channels.

Also

Nickelodeon has announced a new series from the creators of cartoon epic “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”

The new show from Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko has the working title of “The Legend of Korra” and will premiere on Nickelodeon in 2011.

A live action theatrical movie based on the cartoon series called “The Last Airbender” was released earlier this summer to pans from critics and better-than-expected box office. The movie was directed by M. Night Shyamalan (”The Sixth Sense”), who has expressed interest in doing a sequel. Paramount, the studio behind the film, is watching the movie’s international grosses before making firm plans about any follow-ups.

The world of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” is one in which there are four nations–Air, Water, Earth and Fire–each with “benders” capable of controlling the elements. In the first series, a young airbender named Aang is revealed to be the Avatar, someone capable of manipulating all four elements, and prophesied to help save the world. “Avatar: The Last Airbender” debuted on Nickelodeon in 2005 and aired for three seasons.

Nickelodeon said in a release that “The Legend of Korra takes place 70 years after the events of ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ and follows the adventures of the Avatar after Aang – a passionate, rebellious, and fearless teenaged girl from the Southern Water Tribe named Korra.”

Korra’s quest eventually leads her to Republic City–the epicenter of the world of “Avatar.” A metropolis powered by steampunk-type technology, the city is inhabited by people from all nations. Korra finds that Republic City suffers from rampant crime and is also dealing with an anti-bender revolt. Korra is tutored by Aang’s son, Tenzin, is the ways of airbending.

Bolded proper plot stuff.

All I have to say is hell yeah! Hopefully this'll also clear up the sub-plots that were left hanging in the original.

[Evil McBadGuy]

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The Wall Street Journal: How did you come up with the idea for the spinoff?

Bryan Konietzko: When Mike and I first created “Avatar: The Last Airbender” we always knew it would have an ending to it, that particular story. But as the show really took off, and found an audience all over the world, we knew that despite our intentions of ending that story there would probably be a time when Nickelodeon would come calling and want some more episodes….When that time came we had this idea for jumping ahead and telling a story about the next Avatar, this girl Korra.

If there’s a new Avatar, that means Aang has passed on. If he died around age 70, isn’t that pretty young for an Avatar?

Konietzko: You gotta keep in mind that he was frozen in a state of suspended animation for 100 years, so he kind of burned up some of his extra Avatar time.

The new “Avatar” is a woman. What inspired you to change the sex of the protagonist of the series?

Michael DiMartino: It’s not so much about changing because we had Avatar Kyoshi before Aang. We’d established that the Avatar can be male or female and we just thought let’s explore one of those more in depth, because Kyoshi was a popular character with a lot of fans and it seemed like a great opportunity to not retread what we’d done with Aang, who was a great hero, we all loved him, but we really wanted to try something different. And we have so many great female fans out there, who really responded to Katara in the first series, we thought we have the fan base who are really going to enjoy seeing the Avatar be a female.

Konietzko: Mike and I, we love those characters too, and we’ve encountered countless fans who are male who really like those characters too. We just don’t subscribe to the conventional wisdom that you can’t have an action series led by a female character. It’s kinda nonsense to us.

The one image that you released is Korra looking out on Republic City, where a lot of the new show take place. Tell me about that city.

Konietzko: That’s kind of a piece of concept art so when the show premieres next year it won’t look exactly like that but that’s the direction we’re headed. The first series was sort of a road show where every episode they were going to some new location. That was another new thing we wanted to do is root it in one big complex location but mainly one place. We were drawing inspiration from Shanghai in the 1920s and 30s and Hong Kong and even Western cities like Manhattan and even location-wise cities like Vancouver, a city that juts out on a peninsula or an island and has these big mountains around it.

Will we see characters from the previous series pop up?

DiMartino: I don’t want to give anything away, but rest assured there’s a definite link between the old series and this one.

Republic City is a city plagued by crime. There’s an anti-bender revolt. Does this new series deal with more mature themes?

Konietzko: Mike and I like a balance of tones. We never set out to make an overtly silly show or an overly serious dramatic show. We like dealing with all those things. It’s fair to say we’re dealing with some sophisticated things and the show is growing up a bit. But that said, we’re not in a calculated way trying to target another demographic. Even in the first series, it was about a world war and some pretty serious issues.

If Tenzin is Aang’s son, who is his mother?

DiMartino: [To Konietzko] We can say that, right? [To Speakeasy] It’s Katara. It’s not a huge surprise.

What did you guys think of the live-action version of “The Last Airbender”?

Konietzko: We’re just really focused on this new show right now, and kind of taking this off in its own direction and not concerning ourselves with that right now.

So you didn’t follow the casting controversy about the movie version of “The Last Airbender”?

Konietzko: We didn’t head up that film. We’re just happy to be back generating the original content in this mythology, which is what we do.

Would you like to bring a cartoon version of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” to the big screen?

Konietzko: We would love to. I think Mike and I would absolutely love to do feature animation. Either another story, or it if worked out, one in the “Avatar” world. We would be really excited.