On April 12, disaster struck Nickelodeon and Paramount+ studios. The long-awaited and famous film sequel to one of the most popular TV shows of all time was just leaked on X in Ultra HD quality and full-length for free, six months prior to its official release. As of mid-April, “The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender” has amassed over an estimated ten million illegal views since the disastrous leak on Twitter.

Although Paramount+ has issued multiple U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright takedowns (DMCA), which are essentially a legal procedure that allows copyright owners to request pirating websites and other service providers to remove infringed content. It forces platforms to remove content to maintain “safe harbor” protection from liability. 

Despite Nickelodeon’s attempts to take down the leaked film across all platforms, it was already too late. Fans of the series are now left wondering whether there will ever be another type of media for the “Last Airbender” series after both Nickelodeon and Paramount+ just suffered a multi-million dollar loss. The money that would have been gained originally from advertising, teasing, and publishing the film was significantly lost.

“Avatar: The Last Airbender” is a cartoon TV show that I’m sure that most of us are familiar with. Aside from “SpongeBob SquarePants”, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” is one of Nickelodeon’s most successful TV shows and franchises, greatly contributing to the franchise’s success in the entertainment industry. Since its debut in 2005, the cartoon has had multiple live-action movies made after its initial success and an average of 1.1 million views per episode.

“The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender” follows the story of Team Avatar, which includes Sokka, Katara, Toph, Zuko, Suki, and none other than Aang himself. The original series followed the story of a post-apocalyptic world where the world was split into different factions based on bending: Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. 

There was a time of peace between the four nations for generations, as the Avatar, master of all the elements, would maintain order and balance. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop the ruthless fire benders. But when the world needed him most, he vanished.

Following the Fire Nation’s attack, the story takes place 100 years later, where the Avatar is discovered by Katara and her brother Sokka as they embark on a journey to stop the ruthless Fire Benders, encountering multiple allies and enemies who become allies along the way. The original cartoon ends with Team Avatar successfully defeating Fire Lord Ozai and rebuilding the world with peace and unity, discovering other adventures along the way, which is exactly what the new film is going to entail.

The film was announced in February of 2021. Ever since, the film has faced plenty of delays and setbacks. However, just as the film was finally announced to release on Paramount+ on Oct. 9, a user on X named @ImStillDissin completely leaked the full film in Ultra HD quality in response to the film company’s post regarding the movie’s release.

Some fans who have already watched the film illegally claim they watched it because of Paramount’s decision not to release the film in theaters and to make it exclusive on Paramount+. Director Lauren Montgomery publicly expressed great disappointment online, stating that the crew felt the movie “deserves to be seen on the big screen.” Despite the director’s wishes, Paramount decided to make the movie exclusive to their streaming services to draw in more subscriptions from people and gross more money from the film.

However, this decision proved to be a great failure for the company, and Paramount has significantly lost more money than it will ever gain from the subscriptions. 

The account that leaked the full film on X claims that a Nickelodeon employee emailed them the entire film, although multiple sources suggest that this may not be entirely accurate.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, @ImStillDissin thought that he was just “trolling” for fun on X by leaking the full movie in response to Paramount’s tweet. “I saw it’s just a Paramount+ thing, so I decided I’d troll a little bit.” 

The recent leak of “The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender” has led to outrage online on all social media platforms, and of course, has even reached the animators of the film themselves. 

Animator Julia Schoel immediately took to X to express concern and outrage against the leak. “We worked on the Aang movie for years with the expectation that we’d get to celebrate all of our hard work in theaters… just to see people unceremoniously leak the film and pass our shots around on Twitter like candy. I don’t like seeing people use Paramount’s awful decision to remove the movie from theaters to justify leaking it. I totally understand folks not wanting to pay for/support Paramount+, but pirating the movie after its release would have at least been better than this. This is incredibly disrespectful to all of the hard work the artists put in.”

Plenty of animators who worked on “The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender,” aside from Julia Schoel, also expressed their disappointment over the leak online, as the leak has resulted in a chance that Paramount+ might consider never working on another “Avatar: The Last Airbender” project ever again. The leak has led to a multi-million dollar loss for Paramount, and although the leak was originally out of protest against Paramount’s decision to not release the film in theaters, it could potentially cost the artists who worked so hard on the movie their careers, and it just overall disrespects their work. 

Many students across our very own campus also displayed great disappointment regarding the film’s leak on X, and also the potential benefits that Nickelodeon received from the film being released early, such as the positive impact and rating people gave it. Freshman Judah Hernandez added his own beliefs and said, “I think it was very unfair for the people who worked on the movie so hard only for it to be released 6 months earlier, but on the other hand, it’s awesome that we can watch it so soon. And I don’t think it impacts Nickelodeon’s image too badly, as a matter of fact, a lot of people liked the movie, so it definitely had a positive effect for Nickelodeon.”

Freshman Sophia Liang also said, “ I think Avatar is a really cool cartoon. I kinda have mixed feelings about the movie leak. It’s cool to see it early but I also feel kinda bad because it probably doesn’t represent the animators work properly.” 

I know I want to watch the film myself–in fact, I was excited when the film was leaked for anyone to view. I believed it to be an act of protest against Paramount. However, when I learned of the artists’ struggles and how, by watching the film illegally, I would be indirectly responsible for someone possibly losing their job and career for something that was not their fault.

Even if Paramount+ decided not to release the film in theaters, it does not excuse the fact that by pirating the film, you are indirectly robbing artists of their jobs and encouraging the company to never make a continuation of the series ever again. Even though pirating boosts a media’s popularity, it robs the people who worked on the media of the opportunity to be recognized for their work specifically.