Yes, here is yet again another M. Night Shyamalan article about his recent interview this time from i09. Be sure to check it out because it talks about some characters he didn’t include in the movie.

So, will Bumi be in the movie? Read on!

In a small group with a few other select sites, we quizzed M. Night on all things Airbender:

First up: who’s in and who’s out? This is such a long, and enjoyable, series that surely not every single character can make the final cut. What happened to the cabbage guy, the bounty hunter, King Bumi? M. Night tried his best to keep in every essential character to the series, but of course some of them would never make it out of the Nickelodeon cartoon. And sorry, commenter Daumier, King Bumi didn’t make the list — sad, we know — but we think you’ll be surprised with who and what did stay in this movie. And who is being saved for the next film.

While running through the list of major characters, we spent quite a bit of time talking about the furrier friends of the Airbender universe — specifically, that lovable flying Bison Appa. M. Night discussed the struggles of trying to make a realistic-looking film, while simultaneously creating a giant, six-legged flying Bison. And while that seemed difficult, it was reassuring to hear the director talk more about the relationship between Aang and Appa, and their future trials and separations, thankfully, he thoroughly understood the character dynamic between these two.

And yes, M. Night is fiercely dedicated to the making multiple Airbender films. Calling the later seasons “Shakespearean,” he described to us in great detail what he wants from each film, and why he wants to be the one making them, unless he gets canned. But when he signed on to recreate this series, he had a dedication to see it through to the end. Shyamalan understands the weighty material that’s addressed in later episodes, but he did also talk a lot about a major concern many of you had. How do you balance the humor and the action in the first film? From what we could tell, many of the younger jokes had to go, or at least be elevated in delivery, but there’s still a balance. Although we’re still not sure how the balancing act will turn out.

And of course, we didn’t skirt around the number one issue to many of our commenters and readers — the racial issues around this film’s casting. M. Night addressed the issues head-on, and explained the reasoning behind his decisions, as you’ll see in the video. And while we’re sure many of you won’t be happy with any answer, we left with a better understanding for M. Night’s vision for the Airbender world, and the many races and nations that you would see in this film and future works. First and foremost he claimed that he picked the best actor first, and the rest follows.

Finally, the last little secret we’ll spill is that no, M. Night will not be appearing in this particular Airbender film, but if all goes well, he’ll be popping up later, in a stinky cameo his family picked out for him.

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Two new icons have been added to our Icon Page so go check them out!

Also, here is an article I found on the web that was published a couple of days ago about actor Aasif Mandvi (he plays Zhao in the movie). Read an excerpt below.

Mandvi is also looking forward to the July 2 release of M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender,” in which he plays a villainous Commander Zhao.

“I haven’t seen any of the movie yet, just the trailers,” he told India-West in a phone interview. “But it looks pretty exciting. It’s a big action movie, and at times, I felt more like a stuntman than an actor. You study Shakespeare and Chekov, but at the end of the day, you realize you love doing an action movie!

“I realized that I love jumping around and having 50 gallons of water thrown on me. It’s fun, and martial arts are something I’ve never done.”

Easy, it’s not. “I had three months of training with these stunt guys; I’d have to practice one movement every day, for seven hours a day,” he said.

READ MORE

Lastly, I finally replaced the poll in the POLL PAGE. I mean it’s still basically the same question but the poll but I replaced it with a working link (the previous poll I used somehow deleted the “View Results” page).

Remember to keep following us on TWITTER and subscribe to our YOUTUBE CHANNEL if you haven’t.

Yes, here is yet another M. Night Shyamalan article this time from IGN. This is about the Shyamalan interview thing (basically like the articles I put up in my previous post).

March 15, 2010 – Studio movie junkets are a dime a dozen for an old geezer like this writer; phoners with celebs and acclaimed filmmakers are all well and good though often perfunctory; and red carpet interviews are must-avoid events, especially if you’re stuck on the press line anywhere near Entertainment Weekly or the like. Who the hell cares what designer clothes Jeremy Piven is wearing?

But sometimes a pretty cool opportunity comes along in this line of work, as did one last week when IGN and a few other select outlets were invited to have breakfast and an hour-long chat with M. Night Shyamalan, he of The Sixth Sense fame. He would be talking to us about his upcoming live-action adaptation of The Last Airbender animated series, giving us one of the first stabs at discussing the project with him. This was the kind of event that a film geek would salivate over, and even though the IGN staff is seasoned and worn down by the studio PR machine, even we couldn’t help but be a little excited about this particular morning.

Helping the mood of the event was the presence of reps from a few different Airbender fan sites. These fresh-faced kids brought a real enthusiasm to the day which was clearly shared by Shyamalan himself: He’s obviously a real fan of The Last Airbender.

Paramount videotaped the entire discussion and is currently editing it together, so we’ll be running that in the next few days. But in the meantime, we’d like to give you a little preview of what was talked about that morning…

It was his children’s love of the animated series which first got Shyamalan interested in The Last Airbender, followed by his wife and even his parents’ interest in it. He practically had to direct the film, he told us, for fear of starting a familial civil war if he didn’t.

The director noted that this is a rare project for him in that it doesn’t come from an original idea of his own but instead is based on preexisting source material. It’s not that he’s been averse to adapting other works prior to this as much as he just hadn’t quite found the right fit up until now.

The huge amount of CGI in the film was daunting to Shyamalan at first, being a filmmaker — as he pointed out — who is much more interested in filming a family having dinner rather than aliens invading the Earth (you can just show the aliens on TV in the background, he said, like in his movie Signs). The video conference calls with ILM were very difficult in the beginning, though now that the effects are nearing completion he finds them to be the most exciting part of the process.

Despite being known for taking roles and cameos in his films, he apparently is not in The Last Airbender… though he does have an idea of who he might play if a sequel gets made. (He’s not saying who it is, but his kids wanted him to play the “guy who never bathes.”)

Speaking of which, Shyamalan is definitely approaching this project as a trilogy of films. He’s already got the story mapped out for the next two pictures, and he expects that he will direct the entire series — though Paramount could always fire him, he reminded us with a laugh.

He also acknowledged that he does hope to make Unbreakable 2 some day, though he wasn’t too forthcoming about details regarding where he might go with that film. Additionally, he has another thriller in the works right now, so he hasn’t given up on the genre that he first made his name in.

The filmmaker is trying to get proper soundstages built in his hometown of Philadelphia to help boost the movie and TV industry there, and if that happens he expects that the next installments in the Airbender series will shoot on them, as will future films in his Night Chronicles banner of genre pictures by young directors.

And that’s just a taste of what we talked about during our breakfast with M. Night. Be sure to check back at IGN in the coming days for the full video interview!

The Last Airbender will be released on July 2, 2010.

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Now I bet you can’t wait for the movie. Neither can we!

Some lucky people (including three very lucky fansite owners) got a chance to take part in a discussion with M. Night Shyamalan. Thanks to this site we now have some juicy tidbits about the movie!

If you’re dying to know more about the movie, then you HAVE to read these juicy facts below:

The world of The Last Airbender is inspired by Asian culture, much the same way The Lord of the Rings is inspired by Midieval Europe. The story of this film does not take place in our world, hence the absense of East Asian caligraphy that was prevalent in the animated series.

M. Night was just as mystified by the lack of resolution in the Zuko’s Mother story arc in Book 3, and declared he will make it a priority to do so in the films.

Sillier moments and characters from the show, such as the Cabbage Man, will not be a part of the film.

He met with Mike & Bryan during the production of Book 3 to be sure that they had no plans to extend the story into a possible Book 4, before he moved forward with the production of The Last Airbender. Night wanted to be sure it would end in Book 3.

Casting the lead characters was done without bias. Any actor of any race had a shot at the roles. Once the lead characters were cast, the people of their respective nations were cast as the same or similar race.

Toph will be Asian in the sequel.

Earth Kingdom is Primarily Asian.

Water Tribe is kinda mixed with some Russian and northern Europe/Asia qualities.

Shyamalan thought Nicola has some Russian qualities.

Night said he got the idea of how waterbending should look from watching astronauts in space.

He mentioned how he didn’t like the term sequels when talking about these movies; as sequels often mean continuing the story just to make more money. “The first movie is just the beginning of the story.”

They created their own written language for this movie that is inspired by other eastern and Asian languages. This is not our world, but it was inspired by aspects of it.

< li> Night has already written 2 drafts of the script for the second movie.

The movies will get bigger and more location oriented with each film.

EDIT: Added a few more details thanks to laf

Also, here are even more juicier stuff thanks to UGO

Avatar: The Last Airbender enthusiasts will put any doubts aside when they hear Night speak about this project. He really gets why this property is so special, and he knows the source material up and down. Like a true fan, he can throw down phrases like, “Season 1, Episode 16″ before discussing Master Jeong Jeong. To a fan, that speaks volumes.

Paramount videotaped our one-hour roundtable conversation, and much of what was discussed is best kept under wraps until we spring this video on you in a few days. However, I can give you a little preview of some of the facts Night dropped at our feet that true Airbender fans need to hear now now now! Hold tight to Appa’s reins.

The Last Airbender is very much the first in a planned trilogy. Night compares it to Lord of the Rings in that it is all one story not, “more adventures” with your favorite characters. The three films will mirror the three seasons of the series, with some tweaks.

Night plans to direct all three, but before the second one he wants to bang out a smaller-budgeted thriller.

The thriller is *not* Unbreakable 2, though he still hopes one day to get to that. And he knows Bruce Willis feels the same way.

Momo is absolutely in the movie. Night still hopes to find a moment where Momo does something really important and somehow saves the day, but for the first one he’s in there “just for fun.”

That said, our expectations for the amount of comedy in the films has been managed. Night warns that “what works in the show won’t always work in the film” and some of the broad comedy has been cut. Prepare yourselves now – there will be no cabbage salesman in the film. The fate of Penguin Sledding remains inconclusive. (You can parse the reply when you see the video.)

During one enthusiastic moment discussing the CG effects, the phrase “Master Pakku using water like nun-chucks” was used. Everyone in the room responded, “Coooooool.”

Night hopes the CG in The Last Airbender will be unique in that there isn’t as much quick-cutting as in commonly seen in CG-heavy films. Go back and look at his other films and you will see a lot of long takes. This means the CG is going to have to be really top notch, because it can’t be hidden away with cutting.

The writing in the film (in, say, the Waterbending Scroll or Aang’s “Wanted” poster) will not be Chinese calligraphy as in the show, but an Asian-inspired pictorial language created just for this movie.

Perhaps most importantly, Night eloquently and deliberately addressed the so-called “racebending” issue, dealing with what some feel is a specific effort on his part to bleach the Asian origins of the film. It would be hard to summarize his response in a bullet point, so wait for the video next week on that one.

The last person in the Shyamalan house to fall in love with Avatar: The Last Airbender was M. Night himself. In what can only be called an origin story, you’ll hear how Night came to this project through the lobbying of his parents, wife and, most importantly, children.

Stay tuned for more The Last Airbender info between now and when Katara, Sokka and I discover him in an iceberg on July 2nd!

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A new interview with Jackson Rathbone has been conducted by Reelz Channel. In it, Jackson discusses how his role as Sokka in “The Last Airbender” prepared him for his role as Jasper Hale in “Eclipse”.

[Note: Did you notice how Jackson pronounced "Sokka" like "Soh-ka". In my last update, the woman who was talking about the action figures in the video pronounced "Aang" as "Ong". Let us hope they pronounce everything properly in the movie.]

I have added 272 screencaps of the interview to the Gallery.

The news doesn’t end there! The Official Last Airbender website has a new feature. Click on the photo below to find out your element!