In 2025, it was announced that October 2026 would be the release of the long awaited aftermath of “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. The movie, “The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender” was set to show the main cast as adults and the time between the original series and the spin off, “The Legend of Korra”.

The anticipation was quickly plummeted by a full movie leak through twitter last week. Though the original post has been taken down, it has been shared with many othersand is now available on pirate through hundreds of sites.

There currently is a suspect in custody. An unnamed 26-year-old male, who could be facing up to seven years in prison, plus a lawsuit- yet to be determined the pricing of.

Naturally, the fans who have been craving a part two since 2012 are ecstatic they got it six months early, but both Paramount and the creators are suffering greatly.

“We worked on the Aang movie for years with the expectation we’d get to celebrate all of our hard work in theater… just to see people unceremoniously leak the film and pass our shots around on twitter like candy,” Julia Schoel, the creator of  “The Legend of Pipi” tweeted on X.

It’a still a relative mystery as to how the film got out in the first place, but legal action is being taken on the original posters whose account was banned less than 24 hours after the post.

Some fans question the relevance of the leak and the upset Schoel had. The leak made fans happy; the harm was not clear to most. Over 90 artists and animators spent years on this project, only to have it out before they could even celebrate.

There was an expected time of publicizing and an expected time of profit. When movies are leaked in advance, not only can it lead to getting taken out of theaters-   which is very likely in this case- but it means even if it is put out on schedule, the new movie thrill will have already been gone months ago. More people have already watched it, meaning less people will talk about it, meaning it won’t get the same attraction it would have had it been done how intended.

Then there’s the issue of advertising costs themselves. So much time and money is put into advertisements, all of that is now essentially going to waste.

Not that any films are effortless of course, but a fully animated film has a plethora of more time and staff propping it up. When leaking films those ever diligent workers get completely discredited and usually under paid.

With the recent change lots of people have been boycotting paramount recently due to their political alignments and their new pricing. Back in September there was a conflict within the company where 30 paramount Skydance employees contacted CEO David Ellison in concern for the company’s alignment with Israel.

Many people have no moral issue with pirating from a company whom they disagree with politically; this is also a means of lowering the amount of money that Paramount has the ability to donate as less streams equals less profit.

While pirating is technically illegal, it is often the only way those who cannot afford subscriptions can watch the same media as everyone else. That being said, the workers who make projects that get pirated leaked suffer greatly because of it. 

It’s a lose-lose  situation where the two parties can not win in harmony. It is important that people know what they are doing and who it affects, and also remain cautious of the sites they are watching this movie on as many pirate websites have their own set of problems.