Steven Yeun joins animated Avatar movie that hasn't gotten any less confusing to talk about

No word yet on who Yeun will be playing in Aang: The Last Airbender, an animated sequel film to Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Steven Yeun joins animated Avatar movie that hasn't gotten any less confusing to talk about
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The cartoon one, okay? We know you were asking; it’s the natural consequence of this bizarre—and frankly asinine—situation we all find ourselves in, where pop culture is playing host to two completely separate, successful running franchises named Avatar. It doesn’t help that Steven Yeun (you saw his name in the headline, right?) is exactly the kind of guy you could see popping up in either James Cameron’s Avatar movies or the long-running animated series; he’s a successful and prolific voice actor, but also an Oscar nominee who’s done big-budget science fiction films like Mickey 17. This whole thing could really have gone either way, so nobody gets anywhere by yelling at us about it. Christ!

Sorry, sorry, we just get a little heated about things like this. (Someone should have to change, right? It feels like, legally, someone should have to change. Did 50 years of people confusing Star Trek and Star Wars—actual different words, mostly!—teach us nothing?) Anyway: Variety reports that Yeun has signed on for an Avatar film—Calm down! Still the animated one!—alongside previously announced stars Dave Bautista, Eric Nam, Dionne Quan, Jessica Matten, and Román Zaragoza. The film, which will serve as a sequel to the original Nickelodeon show, is being billed as Aang: The Last Airbender, and is being directed by Lauren Montgomery, who previously worked on both Avatar: The Last Airbender and Avatar: The Legend Of Korra. The film is currently slated for a January 30, 2026 release date, i.e., almost exactly a month after Cameron’s Avatar: Fire And Ash, and god, our heads, we swear they’re just going to split down the middle.

No word yet on who Yeun will play in the film—which is to say, the Avatar film, which is to say the Aang movie, do not get this twisted; he last worked in animation with the most recent season of Prime Video’s Invincible.

 
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