At its Tudum 2023 event today, Netflix revealed new trailers for two highly anticipated live-action adaptations of beloved animated series. One Piece gets a full trailer ahead of its August 31st premiere on the streaming service, while we’ll have to settle for a brief teaser trailer for Avatar: The Last Airbender, which won’t arrive until 2024.
The 90-second One Piece trailer shows the cast and settings of the live-action take on the manga and long-running anime series. We see plenty of star Iñaki Godoy as the naive but kind protagonist Monkey D. Luffy, who can stretch like rubber. The other Straw Hat Pirate crew members are Mackenyu as Roronoa Zero, Emily Rudd as Nami, Jacob Romero Gibson as Usopp and Taz Skylar as Sanji.
Meanwhile, the 37-second Avatar: The Last Airbender teaser doesn’t give us any shots of the cast or environments from the live-action remake. Instead, we see symbols of the four nations (Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation and Air Nomads) fading in and out. Each includes a subtle audio cue corresponding to its element. Whenever we do finally see its cast, it will include Gordon Cormier as Aang, Kiawentiio as Katara, Ian Ousley as Sokka and Daniel Dae Kim as Fire Lord Ozai.
You may recall from a few years back that Avatar: The Last Airbender original series creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko departed the project, raising questions about how faithful the new adaptation will be to the source material. “I realized I couldn’t control the creative direction of the series, but I could control how I responded,” DiMartino said in 2020. “So, I chose to leave the project. It was the hardest professional decision I’ve ever had to make, and certainly not one that I took lightly, but it was necessary for my happiness and creative integrity.” Still, he added at the time that the Netflix adaption “has the potential to be good.” We’ll have to wait until next year to find out.
