Aang: The Last Airbender casting director reveals why the OG voice cast was replaced

More than 20 years after it premiered, Avatar: The Last Airbender will return to our screens in January next year with Aang: The Last Airbender. The movie sees our original Team Avatar all grown up, but it won't involve a lot of the original voice actors.

Dante Basco, who played Zuko in the original show, is one of the only returning cast members. Casting director for the film, Jenny Jue, explained on Reddit why so much of the original talent wasn't returning.

"Since the original show was released, there's been more emphasis in voice acting to match actors' ethnic/racial background to the characters they're portraying," she wrote. "It's a fictional world, but there are cultural influences for each nation/kingdom, and we wanted to explore the talent from those groups."

Similar to the Netflix live-action show, it seems Aang: The Last Airbender will focus on bringing talent that better matches the people represented by the fictional four nations. It might be somewhat of a controversial decision, considering that the original cast was so beloved, but we'll have to wait and see how the new team does next January.