The film was intended to be the first part of a trilogy, with the next two films being based on books 2 and 3. While the film ultimately made a modest profit at the box office, about $150,000,000 was spent on production with another $130,000,000 spent on advertising, which would bring a total of $280,000,000 spent on one movie. Therefore, The Last Airbender did not gross enough to have Paramount green light the last two sequels. However a new live action remake series of the original animated show is in development for Netflix.
The creators of the show, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, served as executive producers and were initially supportive of the film production. However, both of them ended up being very unsatisfied with the finished product. In a podcast interview from 2014, Konietzko revealed that "A) We didn't want it to be done at all. Before anyone was attached, we didn't want it. And then B) If it was going to be done, we wanted to do it, but they weren't going to let us. C) When they attached Night, we just thought, 'Well, this is what we've been dealt. We'll just offer help when it's asked of us, and if it's not, we'll stay out of the way.' In the beginning, it was more positive and we offered help, but then we had a big falling out." They've even mentioned how they gave a lot of input that went nowhere as it all got pushed to the wayside.
In the original show, Sokka is a comic relief character. However, no comedy comes from the Sokka in the movie, which garnered significant criticism.
In Britain, "bender" is a slang term for a male homosexual, so lines in this movie such as "Look out, he's a bender!" resulted in plenty of giggling in UK movie theaters, making it difficult for audiences to take the film seriously.