‘Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender’ Leaked Online. Some Fans Say Paramount Deserves the Fallout

The online leak a full version of Avatar: Aang, the Last Airbender– a highly anticipated animated film in a multimedia fantasy franchise – has divided passionate fans while upsetting those who spent years working on the film.

The leaks started on Saturday evening, about six months before Aang was to premiere on Paramount+. User @ImStillDissin posted two short clips from the film. “Nickelodeon accidentally emailed me the entire Avatar aang movie,” he claimed. He also threatened to release the entire film if Paramount did not release an official trailer, and he released an image of the film’s end credits, revealing previously undisclosed voiceovers and roles. Media posts from @ImStillDissin were later hit with copyright strikes and removed.

But within 48 hours, links to download the full film appeared on 4chan and X, where some users also streamed the film directly. On the web, fans said they had managed to hack and watch what appeared to be a nearly finished and “beautiful” animated film.

While some argued that Paramount deserved to be punished due to certain creative and marketing decisions surrounding the film, others pointed out how the leak was a blow to the animators and production team. A number of team members took to social media to express their sadness and frustration.

“We worked on the Aang movie for years with the hope that [sic] we could celebrate all our hard work in theaters. Just to see people callously leak the movie and spread our photos on Twitter like candy,” host Julia Schoel wrote on X on Tuesday.

The user behind @ImStillDissin, who did not want to reveal his real name for fear of legal consequences, told WIRED that he obtained the film almost by chance and did not expect his posts to trigger such a crisis in the entertainment world. “When I posted those clips, I was purely trolling,” he says. “I was expecting an agricultural influence day at best, not for it all to blow up like this.”

(While WIRED has done its due diligence in verifying that the person speaking to us was behind the @ImStillDissin X account, we recognize that the hacker community is notorious for trolling.)

According to @ImStillDissin, a screen-captured version of Avatar: Aang, the Last Airbender was circulating among people he knew from his years in the hacker community, one of whom shared it with him. “Generally speaking, the film and television supply chain is full of insecure companies and suppliers and lax controls,” he says. He notes that two Spongebob the films leaked months before their 2024 release date. “Someone on 4chan who wasn’t happy with my drip feed thing posted a copy of a draft script [of the new Avatar film] about two years ago,” says @ImStillDissin.

Neither Nickelodeon nor its parent company Paramount have confirmed that a hack has taken 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 justified in pirating and sharing the film because of the voice actor overhaul. Last year, during an AMA on Reddit, casting director Jenny Jue wrote that voice casting Avatar The TV show that aired on Nickelodeon in the 2000s was not returning due to efforts to “match the actors’ ethnic/racial background to the characters they portray.”