Netflix‘s Avatar: The Last Airbender showrunner Albert Kim has spoken about the process of deciding which parts of the animated series could be adapted in to live-action.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Kim was asked about what the biggest challenge was when it came to adapting the animated series into a live-action production. The showrunner explained that there are many things one can do in animation that are difficult and expensive to recreate with real people, meaning he had to choose which parts of the original series to “leave behind” in the Netflix show.
“Well, there’s certain things you can draw that when you’re trying to translate in live-action are incredibly complicated, both practically and financially,” Kim stated. “There are so many epic sequences in the original series that I wish we could have done, but it would have just broken the bank many times over. The Northern Air Temple episode of the first season is a finale in itself, and if we had tried to do that we would be blowing all the resources right there. So, we had to pick and the toughest part of this process was deciding what to leave behind — and I’m sure there will be fans who are not happy that they didn’t get their favorite episodes and their favorite characters, and all I can say is it pains me too.
“I wish we could have done all of them, but there’s the reality of creating eight-hour-long episodes for a serialized drama and also expanding the world in places and telling new parts of the story that hadn’t been told before. That takes up time. I think people think it’s as easy as saying, ‘Well there are 20 half-hour episodes of the original. That’s 10 hours. And there are eight one-hour episodes of the new show, so they only needed to make two more episodes.’ But it’s not exactly one-to-one there, so that was the process we went through.”
Who stars in the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series?
The live-action TV adaptation is led by Gordon Cormier as Aang, Kiawentiio as Katara, Ian Ousley as Sokka, and Dallas Liu as Zuko. Joining them are Daniel Dae Kim as Fire Lord Ozai, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Uncle Iroh, Lim Kay Siu as Gyatso, Ken Leung as Commander Zhao, Elizabeth Yu as Princess Azula, Maria Zhang as Kyoshi warrior Suki, C.S. Lee as Avatar Roku, Amber Midthunder as Princess Yue, A Martinez as Pakku, Yvonne Chapman as Avatar Kyoshi, Tamlyn Tomita as Yukari, Casey Camp-Horinek as Gran Gran and more.
