A good friend of mine keeps asking me, on behalf of herself and her daughter, when the third season of
Avatar: The Last Airbender will air. Nobody seems to know, and there's been no Google search good enough to come up with the answer. The San Diego Comic Con has an
Avatar 3rd Season panel
on its schedule (Sat. 7/28, 10:30), but nothing in the blurb about that says when to expect the broadcasts. My friend and I have simply concluded that it will begin to air sometime after the
Sept. 11th release of
Avatar - The Complete Book 2 Collection DVD set, but how soon after? Probably pretty soon, since the plan a studio often has is to use the previous season DVD sets as a marketing tie-in to the debut of the new season in the Fall.
But two things complicate that for
Avatar. One is
the word last January that Paramount signed M. Night Shyamalan to be Producer, Director and Writer of a big-screen, live-action trilogy of
Avatar: The Last Airbender, with each film based on the story arcs seen in each of the planned three seasons of the Nick animated series. However, James Cameron has been working on a film for Fox called "Avatar" for more than a decade, and now there is a dispute over who gets to use the name. With Fox & Cameron's long-standing claim on the name, unless someone at the MPAA decides they took too long (snooze/lose), then M. Night's films may just end up being called "
Airbender" at the box office.
The other this that seems to complicate the pinning down of the 3rd season's air schedule is that this particular show is handled differently on DVD: the studio puts out single-disc releases going along as the show's season airs. Then they later collect them into a season set that has a bonus disc in it. Since this is a "kid show", we suppose the single-disc releases are aimed at parents who buy DVDs for their children more in the "costs $20-and-under" style, instead of waiting for the better deal later on. But would that make a difference as to when the show's third season can be pinned down? Yes, but not in a bad way! Because all the episodes on the disc have to air before the DVD comes out, right?
This morning Paramount Home Entertainment has announced the DVD release of
Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book 3: Fire, Volume 1 on
October 30th. The first single-disc release contains the first 5 episodes of the new season, with a running time of about two hours. Those episodes are
reportedly to be titled "The Awakening," "The Headband," "The Painted Lady," "Sokka's Master," and "The Beach." In order to get this release out at that time, with that many eps, and assuming they are waiting until after the 2nd season DVD collection hits in the second week of September, then Nick will have to begin broadcasting in the third or fourth week of September. Cost of the B3,V1 disc is expected to be $16.99 SRP, similar to the previous individual DVDs in this series. Here's a look at the packaging. Oh, look! Fire! Wait, when did Aang grow hair?
