The upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender sequel movie Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender was leaked in full earlier this month, and now the person who allegedly hacked into a Paramount server and distributed the film has been arrested and could serve up to seven years in prison.
According to The Straits Times, the unidentified 26-year-old man in Singapore was arrested on April 16, but it was only today that the local police put out a statement saying that it seized electronic devices, which included a digital copy of the unreleased film. The police say that the man had gained unauthorized remote access to a media server, from which he was able to download the film before distributing it online. According to local law, unauthorized access to computer material carries a maximum of seven years jail time, and/or a potential fine of up to $50,000.
Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender, was originally set to launch in theaters before being relegated to a streaming release on Paramount+, where it was set to debut on October 9. It remains to be seen if this entire fiasco is going to change Paramount’s release plans, with several fans calling for the film to come to theaters as originally planned as a show of solidarity with the animators and actors whose work was leaked ahead of time.
As the film circulated online, animators who worked on the film like Julia Schoel have said the leak was “disrespectful,” and that she’d rather people have pirated the movie after it was released than leak and distribute it like this.
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.