Paramount is investigating the online leak of its upcoming film “The Legend Of Aang: The Last Airbender,” but the company has determined that it did not come from within the studio.
The entire film was posted on X over the weekend. Despite takedown efforts, it remains viewable there as of Thursday morning. The animated feature was originally slated for a theatrical release on Oct. 9, but the studio decided instead to distribute it exclusively on Paramount+ — leading to fan protest.
Paramount declined to comment on the leak. “The Legend of Aang” is based on the Nickelodeon series “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” It was animated by Flying Bark Productions, based in Australia.
The X account that originally posted clips from the film on Saturday — “ImStillDissin” — claimed the leak came from someone at Nickelodeon, a Paramount Global subsidiary, who “accidentally emailed me the entire Avatar Aang movie.” But a source familiar with the situation said that the initial investigation determined that the vulnerability had nothing to do with Paramount’s systems.
Though piracy is common on social media platforms, it is very rare for an entire film to leak so far in advance of its release date. Artists who worked on the film expressed their disappointment on social media.
“We worked on the Aang movie for years with the expectation that we’d get to celebrate all of our hard work in theaters,” said animator Julia Schoel on X, “… just to see people unceremoniously leak the film and pass our shots around on Twitter like candy.”
Schoel also said that Paramount’s “awful decision” to remove the movie from theaters does not justify leaking it online.
“I totally understand folks not wanting to pay for/support paramount+” she wrote, “but pirating the movie after its release would have at least been better than this. This is incredibly disrespectful to all of the hard work the artists put in.”
Parmount+ announced the decision last December to release the film on its streaming platform. The film’s director, Lauren Montgomery, expressed her dismay with that decision in an Instagram post last month, when she announced that the film had wrapped production.
“We screened the final film for the crew and celebrated the end of a four-year journey,” she wrote. “Now it waits in limbo until its release in October… The recent decision to move us from theatrical to streaming might give the impression that the quality wasn’t sufficient, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. This movie deserves to be seen on a big screen!!! Can’t wait for you all to see it!”
Dave Bautista, Steven Yeun and Eric Nam will headline the voice cast, while William Mata is on board as co-director.
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