Online leaks of the full version of Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender—the highly anticipated animated film in the multimedia fantasy—has divided avid fans while angering those who spent years working on film.
The leakage it started on X late Saturday night, about six months before Aang was scheduled to premiere on Paramount+. User @ImStillDissin published two short sections from the movie. “Nickelodeon accidentally emailed me the entire movie Avatar aang,” he claimed. He also threatened to stream the entire film if Paramount didn’t release an official trailer, and posted stills from the film’s end credits, revealing previously undisclosed voice actors and roles. Media from @ImStillDissin’s posts were later hit with copyright strikes and removed.
But within 48 hours, links to download the full movie appeared on 4chan and X, where some users also streamed the movie live. On the web, fans said they were successful pirates and watching what seemed to be almost over with “beautiful” animated film.
While some argued that Paramount deserved to be punished because of certain creative and marketing decisions around the film, others noted how the leak was a blow to the cast and producers. Some members of the team took to social media to express their sadness and frustration.
“We worked on the aang movie for years hoping that (sic) we would get to celebrate all our hard work in theaters. Only to see people nonchalantly leak the movie and pass our pictures on twitter like candy,” actress Julia Schoel. he wrote Tuesday X
User @ImStillDissin, who would not reveal his real name for fear of legal repercussions, tells WIRED that he found the film by chance and did not expect his posts to cause such controversy in the entertainment world. “When I posted those clips I was just playing,” he says. “I was hoping for a better farming day, not for the whole thing to blow up like this.”
(While WIRED has done its due diligence in confirming that the person speaking to us was behind the @ImStillDissin X account, we acknowledge that the hacking community is notorious for getting away.)
According to @ImStillDissin, a screenshot version of Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender it was circulating among people he knew from his days in the hacker community, one of whom involved him. “In general, the film and TV supply chain is full of insecure companies and vendors with ineffective checks,” he claims. He notes that the two are different SpongeBob SquarePants cinema leaked months before their release dates in 2024. “Someone on 4chan who was unhappy with the drip feed stuff posted a copy of the draft document (of the new. Avatar movie) from about two years back,” says @ImStillDissin.
Neither Nickelodeon nor its parent company Paramount have confirmed that the hack took place, nor have they released a statement on the matter. They also did not respond to requests for comment.
Originally announced in 2021, Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender marked the first production for Avatar Studios, a division of Nickelodeon’s animation department.
Some people felt they had the right to pirate and share the movie due to the re-play of the voice actors. Last year, during a Reddit AMAsproducing director Jenny Jue he wrote that the voice came out Avatar A television show that aired on Nickelodeon in the 2000s did not return due to efforts to “match the ethnic/racial backgrounds of the actors and the characters they portray.”
