

Avatar: The Last Airbender the movie videogame has been announced for Wii and DS release on June 29th to coincide with the movie.

The game is based on the film called “The Last Airbender” which in turn is based on the hit Nickelodeon anime series called “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. The movie had to drop the title “Avatar” due to a popular James Cameron film you may have heard of, but the game based on the movie will apparently be keeping the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” name.

As mentioned, the game will be published by THQ for Wii and DS release this June, and in it players will get to experience the story of the film from the perspective of Zuko, the villain, in a unique twist. Although players will also be taking control of series protagonist (aka, good guy) Aang, as well as the Fire Nation prince and The Blue Spirit.

The film releases to theaters on July 2nd, 2010 and is being directed by big-name Hollywood director M. Night Shyamalan, who is well known for the films The Sixth Sense (and Praying with Anger and Wide Awake before it), Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, Lady in the Water and The Happening. In addition to directing, Shyamalan also wrote the script for the movie and was highly involved in all aspects from the very beginning. The film will be produced by Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies and distributed by Paramount.

The cast of the film is made up mostly of unknowns, but will feature Dev Patel of 2008’s Best Picture, the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire playing Prince Zuko. It will also star Jackson Rathbone (Jasper Hale in the Twilight films) as Sokka, Noah Ringer as Aang, and Nicola Peltz as Katara.

Here is the official trailer for the flim which is the first part in a planned trilogy and looks AWESOME I must say. And I’m not even a fan . . . maybe I’ll go check out the anime now. I hear it’s really good.

Anime films have gotten a really bad reputation thanks to bombs like Dragon Ball: Evolution, I wonder if this film will be the shot in the arm that anime films need in order to be taken seriously and looked at with respect. Just like films based on videogames are still looking for that elusive movie that puts them over the top and into mainstream respectability just like Spider-Man did with comic book-based films, I hope that The Last Airbender is a raging success so that we can see some great films based on AMAZING anime like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Inuyasha, Yu Yu Hakusho, Naruto and the like (I wouldn’t mind seeing a Yu-Gi-Oh film based on the first season of the anime if it was done well . . . Or even a Pokemon movie….. oh wait, nevermind).

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