Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko have announced they are both leaving Netflix's live-action remake of Avatar: The Last Airbender after prolonged creative differences between the streaming service and the shows co-creators.
This is a particular blow for fans who were excited that a live-action Avatar was finally going to be done right–after all, the last time the pair had a falling out with the team adapting their work, we got The Last Airbender, a film that won five Razzies and has a 5 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating.
Netflix, however, has confirmed the project will go ahead. After the co-creator released an Instagram post and blog revealing why they have left the project, the streamer released a statement saying: "We have complete respect and admiration for Michael and Bryan and the story that they created in the Avatar animated series. Although they have chosen to depart the live-action project, we are confident in the creative team and their adaptation."
In a post on his personal blog titled, "An open letter to Avatar: The Last Airbender fans," DiMartino said: "In June of this year, after two years of development work, Bryan Konietzko and I made the difficult decision to leave the production."
He later added: "In a joint announcement for the series, Netflix said that it was committed to honoring our vision for this retelling and to supporting us on creating the series. And we expressed how excited we were for the opportunity to be at the helm. Unfortunately, things did not go as we had hoped."
Konietzko, meanwhile, was more scathing about the process on his Instagram post. He wrote: "When Netflix brought me on board to run this series alongside Mike two years ago, they made a very public promise to support our vision. Unfortunately, there was no follow-through on that promise." He later slammed what he called a "negative and unsupportive environment."
That post, incidentally, used as its background a piece of concept art from The Last Airbender series showing the sky bison Appa–so far the only glimpse we have been given of the team's vision for the show.
DiMartino and Konietzko's blog and Instagram post provide a fascinating insight into not just behind the scenes of the Avatar live-action project, which has faced a number of delays in its production process, but also how Netflix deals with creatives.
This comes a number of weeks after Michaela Coel revealed she turned down a $1 million offer from the streamer for her show I May Destroy You when they refused to give her any percentage of the copyright for her own show.
Speaking to Vulture, the writer said that when she offered to take just 0.5 percent of the copyright a Netflix executive emailed her: "Michaela? I just want you to know I'm really proud of you. You're doing the right thing."
Coel said of this: "She said those words to me, and I finally realized—I'm not crazy. This is crazy."
So far, Netflix has not announced who will be taking over as showrunner on their Avatar: The Last Airbender series, which is still assumed to be going ahead—after all, the original Nickelodeon show just broke the record set by Ozark for the longest run on the Netflix top 10 series chart.
