Photo: Instagram/Lim Kay Siu and Avatar: The Last Airbender
Cover Photo: Instagram/Lim Kay Siu and Avatar: The Last Airbender

Production for the highly-anticipated remake has also officially begun as of November 16, according to Netflix

This story was first published on August 17, 2021, and updated on November 18, 2021. 


In a major win for the local entertainment scene, Netflix announced this week that they cast Singapore’s veteran theatre and television actor Lim Kay Siu to star in its new live-action TV adaptation of Nickelodeon’s animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender.

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Lim will be take on the role of Gyatso, a kind and caring Air Nomad monk who is also a guardian, mentor and father figure to Avatar Aang.

The local actor will star alongside Filipino-Canadian actor Gordon Cormier who will be taking up the iconic role of Avatar Aang. The roles of Katara and Sokka will be played by Kiawentiio Tarbell and Ian Ousley, according to Netflix.

Dallas Liu, who also appeared in the hit Marvel movie, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, will be taking on the role of the firebender, Zuko.

Fans will also see Kim’s Convenience star Paul Sun-Hyung Lee playing Uncle Iroh, a retired Fire Nation general and Star Wars actor Ken Leung taking on the role of Commander Zhao, an ambitious Fire Nation military officer.

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Liu’s casting into an international project is also not his first. In fact, you may remember that Lim once starred alongside Chow Yun-fat and Jodie Foster in Anna And The King. He played Prince Chowfa, King Mongkut’s brother.

He has also, in the past, played a North Korean villain alongside Pierce Brosnan in the television spy movie, Night Watch.

The casting announcements were hotly anticipated especially because it comes about three years after Netflix first revealed that the reboot would be happening back in 2018. 

At that point, many fans were sceptical as the last live-action film adaptation of the Nickelodeon classic by M Night Shyamalan in 2010 did not represent its characters well. 

However, with the announcement of the cast, it seems that Netflix is attempting to ensure that the film remains in line with the original cartoon’s Asian and Indigenous elements. 

“A live-action version would establish a new benchmark in representation and bring in a whole new generation of fans,” said the show’s writer and producer, Albert Kim in a Netflix blog post in August. “This was a chance to showcase Asian and Indigenous characters as living, breathing people. Not just in a cartoon, but in a world that truly exists, very similar to the one we live in.”

In addition to this, efforts were made to bring in the creators of the original animated series, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Unfortunately, both of them decided to drop out of the show after they disagreed with the show’s creative direction.

Regardless, fans can still expect to see a lot of familiar scenes and characters.

“I didn’t want to change things for the sake of change. I didn’t want to modernize the story or twist it to fit current trends. Aang is not going to be a gritty antihero. Katara is not going to get curtain bangs,” he joked.

“We’ll be expanding and growing the world, and there will be surprises for existing fans and those new to the tale. But throughout this process, our byword has been ‘authenticity’. To the story. To the characters. To the cultural influences,” Kim continued.

On November 16, Netflix announced that production has officially begun on the show at a custom-built facility in Vancouver. The streaming service partnered with Pixomondo who designed and operates this facility to make it a reality. 

The remake will also make use of the same technology that was used for Disney Plus’ The Mandalorian and Netflix’s The Midnight Sky.

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