Avatar: The Last Airbender was forced to change its name due to James Cameron’s Avatar.
Animator Giancarlo Volpe directed 19 episodes of the popular animated series, and now he’s taken to Twitter to reveal why the show was forced to change its name.
“In 2004 we learned that we had to change the name of our show from ‘Avatar’ to ‘Avatar the Last Airbender’ because James Cameron already had the rights to a movie called Avatar,” he explained. “Now the sequel is called ‘The Way of Water’. If part 3 is called ‘The Firebending Masters’ we riot.”
In 2004 we learned that we had to change the name of our show from “Avatar” to “Avatar the Last Airbender” because James Cameron already had the rights to a movie called Avatar.
Now the sequel is called “The Way of Water.”
If part 3 is called “The Firebending Masters” we riot
— Giancarlo Volpe (@Giancarlo_Volpe) December 4, 2022
Ironically, the water element plays an important part in the animated show – now it’s also part of the title for Cameron’s upcoming Avatar sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water.
The hit animated show was originally released in 2005 – four years before Avatar hit theaters.
However, it looks as though Cameron already had the monopoly on the name, forcing the team behind Avatar: The Last Airbender to get creative. And it’s also the reason that its spin-off movie, The Last Airbender, was forced to abandon the ‘Avatar’ part completely.
Still, that hasn’t stopped Volpe from using his own names for the two projects.
“I noticed I refer to them as ‘Avatar’ ( the one I worked on) and ‘Cameron’s Avatar’,” he revealed.
Unfortunately for Volpe, Cameron had been developing Avatar for a very long time, as far back as 1994 when he wrote the film’s original treatment. In fact, in 1996, he announced that planned to make the film after Titanic.
Obviously, that didn’t come to pass, but in 2009 Avatar finally debuted in theaters worldwide… and became the highest-grossing movie the world had ever seen.
IGN’s review of Avatar gave it 9/10 and said: “Not since seeing Star Wars as a little kid have I felt so completely and magically transported to such a strange, new world.”
Thankfully, that’s not the end for The Last Airbender, which will be getting its own full feature film in 2025. In fact, it’s the first of three upcoming animated feature films in the Last Airbender universe.
Want to read more about Avatar: The Last Airbender? Check out the upcoming Avatar video game, Quest for Balance as well as the open-world RPG, Avatar Generations.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
