Oh, man, this is gonna get ugly fast.

On the same day that James Cameron announces that he’s moving ahead with his long-in-gestation AVATAR, an original sci-fi screenplay that Cameron wrote, M. Night Shyamalan and Paramount Pictures have announced that Shyamalan has signed on to produce, write, and direct a possible trilogy of films based on AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER, the Nickelodeon series.

I’m not familiar with the show, but the basic description of it has always left me a little cold. Maybe there’s more to it, though, and Shyamalan obviously feels like there’s something that will take more than one movie to tell properly. Personally, I’m just interested to see what he does when working with someone else’s material, where there’s an already-existing fanbase that he has to try and please. New territory for him.

Now let the battle of the AVATARs begin!!

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Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles