The ‘Blind Bandit’ episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender introduced us to a host of lovable Earthbenders. Chief among them, was the ten-year-old Toph Beifong, Aang’s Earthbending master-to-be. Aside from being known as the champion ‘Blind Bandit’, Toph would also discover metalbending later in the series.
However, Toph was not the only fan-favorite character that appeared in ‘The Blind Bandit’. The cast of supporting characters in the show has a knack for being memorable and hilarious, and one such character was The Boulder, who was supposed to be played by everyone’s favorite Hollywood wrestler: Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.
The Boulder in Avatar: The Last Airbender was modeled on The Rock
When the creators of the show were conceptualizing the Boulder, they took clear inspiration from Johnson. Speaking on the official Avatar: Braving the Elements podcast, Michael Dante DiMartino said:
“This was before he was like the Rock as we know him now, but he was definitely on that trajectory, and since [the Boulder] was modeled after him, we tried to get him to be the voice,”
Upon reaching out to the Rock’s agent, the team received quite disappointing news. They were told, by a representative of Johnson that he was not interested in doing television at the time. However, that did not mean that The Boulder would lose his wrestling connection anytime soon. Apart from the fact that the underground battles are staged and presented like WWE matchups, The Boulder is voiced by a WWE Hall of Famer and one of the Rock’s good friends, Mick Foley.
While The Rock was unable to work on the project in its animated form, perhaps he will be open to making a cameo in the Netflix live-action series.
What else can we expect from Netflix’s Avatar series?
Netflix broke the anime to live-action curse with its hit pirate adventure fantasy series One Piece. Fans have dared to hope that the streaming giant will strike gold twice, and do justice to the Last Airbender as well. However, given that the fans have been burned once already (sorry Zuko) with M Night Shyamalan’s live-action film, one can forgive the skepticism some fans have portrayed for the show.
While casting for the series has received wide acclaim among the fans of the anime, it remains to be seen how the show will condense 22 episodes a season into an 8-episode-a-season endeavor. The season is expected to debut on February 22, 2024. Fans await this with bated breath.
Apart from Netflix’s work with the series, Nickelodeon has set up Avatar Studios with the sole purpose of minting content from the franchise. Currently, 3 projects are in development with the studio. Concept art was revealed at the Acceny Art Festival, with the title ‘The Avatar Returns’ along with the in-universe symbol for the earth element.
We got the first piece of concept art for the new AVATAR movie from Lauren Montgomery at #AnnecyFestival! Didn’t show much, BUT it was a shot of what looked like a walled city with a giant tower in the middle, with the caption “THE AVATAR RETURNS” and the symbol for Earth.
— Rafael Motamayor (@RafaelMotamayor) June 16, 2022
Avatar Studios has also been busy working on canon supplementary material around the main franchise, having made Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game, Chronicles of the Avatar novels, comics, and Avatar: The Last Airbender Cookbook: Official Recipes from the Four Nations.
