There’s never been anything small about M. Night Shyamalan’s career.  As a mostly unknown 27-year-old filmmaker, his first studio film, Wide Awake, received a splashy March 15, 1998 premiere at New York’s Ziegfeld Theater with an introduction by sitting Vice-President Al Gore.  At age 29, his next film, The Sixth Sense stunned audiences around the world and reaped global grosses of $672 million along with two personal Oscar nominations for Shyamalan.  Later that year, his first screenplay for a studio film that he didn’t direct, Stuart Little, took in $300 million, worldwide.  Shyamalan’s next five films grossed $1.1 billion, worldwide.  The critical reception may have cooled over his past few films, but it served to shoot the stakes even higher for his new film, The Last Airbender, which opens today.  However, Shyamalan gives off the sense that he wouldn’t be happy with anything less than a monumental challenge.

Collider caught up with Shyamalan and some of his cast this week.  Hit the jump for the highlights from roundtable interviews with Shyamalan, Dev Patel, Jackson Rathbone and Nicola Peltz, including Shyamalan on his long, strange trip to 3D, Patel on Bollywood’s “God-awful” yet bankable movies, Rathbone on scoring his perfect Girlfriend and Shyamalan on why he doesn’t want “two feet tall Daniel Day-Lewises.”

I hate everything about M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender.  I hate that it’s racist.  I hate that it takes a great, easy-to-adapt show and completely disrespects the material.  I hate the performances.  I hate the special effects.  I hate the borderline non-existent 3D that serves only to jack up ticket prices.  I hate the lack of imagination.  I hate the embarrassingly bad script that would be laughed out of a Screenwriting 101 class. I hate the consequences if this movie is a success at the box office.  I hate the consequences if it fails at the box office.  I hate that this movie exists.  And “hate” isn’t a strong enough word.

Paramount has released the full press kit for director M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender which includes are over 30 images and 11 movie posters (domestic and international).  While some of the images have been previously released over the past six months, there are a lot of new ones.  So if you’ve been counting the days till The Last Airbender gets released, hit the jump to check out the images.  The film stars Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Dev Patel, Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Toub, Aasif Mandvi and Cliff Curtis.

In what some may see as an attempt to recapture the Oscar/box office magic of Slumdog Millionaire, Fox Searchlight will adapt the Deborah Moggach novel These Foolish Things for the screen.  With the new title The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the film will follow “a movie about a group of British senior citizens who travel to India to live out their dotage — an outsourcing, after a fashion — and find a new lease on life.”

24 Frames reports that Fox Searchlight is reaching out to Julie Christie, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, and Peter O’Toole to star. (For those keeping track, there are twenty Oscar nominations in that group.)  Meanwhile, Slumdog star Dev Patel is in talks to co-star, and John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) is on the top of the studio’s director wishlist.  Hit the jump for the synopsis for These Foolish Things.

The British cult hit TV show Skins is being adapted into a film.  For those unfamiliar with the show (like myself) let us consult Wikipedia: “Skins is a British teen drama that follows a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England through the two years of sixth form (similar to our “grades”). The controversial plotline explores issues including dysfunctional families, personality and eating disorders, mental illness and death.  The show is notable for its casting of amateur actors and young writers. The cast are entirely replaced every two series, when the characters leave sixth form.”

Variety reports that the cast is being kept under wraps, but executive producer Steve Christian says “there will be some names from series one and two and some new faces as well.”  I’m curious to know if first series cast members Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man) and Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) will be in the movie since they’ve hit upon successful film careers. Production is set to commence at the end of September.  Hit the jump to see a (slightly NSWF) trailer for the show.

A new TV Spot for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender debuted during last night’s Olympic games.  The commercial has some new footage from the movie…but not more than 4 or 5 seconds.  Saying that, I’m starting to get excited for the movie as the footage has looked very cool and I’m a huge fan of Shyamalan’s early work.  I’d love for Airbender to be a return to form.  We’ll all know July 2.  Hit the jump to check out the new ad:

M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming and slightly racist-looking, The Last Airbender, has two new character banners with one featuring the hero, Aang (Noah Ringer) and the other with the (apparent) villain Zuko (Dev Patel).  As you’ll see Aang is white as the driven snow and Zuko, not so much.  And if you’re wondering if all of my Last Airbender stories will harp on the racial aspect, the answer is, “Yeah, probably.”  Shyamalan has taken an acclaimed animated show featuring characters of various East Asian descent and made all the heroes white while the villain gets to be played by a (great) Indian actor.  This is particularly bizarre since Shyamalan is, you know, Indian.  So unless he’s planning a twist where it turns out all the good guys were villains and all the villains are good guys, he’s making a movie that may not be as dumb as The Happening (that’s a really tough bar to clear), but could be a much bigger middle finger to fans of the show, fans who are mostly kids.  Maybe those kids won’t care about the whitewashing, and hey, is it really so important that kids who aren’t white have heroes they can identify with?  Who doesn’t like white people?

Hit the jump to check out both character banners along with the official synopsis.  Presumably, we’ll eventually be getting two more featuring the other major characters, Katara (Nicola Peltz) and Sokka (Jackson Rathbone).  The Last Airbender hits theaters on July 2nd.  I hope it’s not as racist as it looks.

In the latest issue of Empire Magazine, there is a story on the upcoming family-friendly, martial arts epic The Last Airbender, and we now have scans of a few images from behind the scenes of the film. The Last Airbender, based on a Nickelodeon animated series similarly titled Avatar: The Last Airbender, is written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and stars newcomer Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Dev Patel, and Jackson Rathbone. The television series had three seasons, and ideally the film will launch a successful franchise for Paramount Pictures.  More after the jump:

USA Today has landed the first photo from M. Night Shaymalan’s “The Last Airbender” which is based off the popular Nickelodeon quasi-anime,

“Avatar: The Last Airbender”.  I wonder why they didn’t keep the “Avatar” part of the title…

Basically the photo is a kid in his PJs about to kick your ass. The kid is Aang, the titular “Airbender” (which I always thought would be a great name for an airline run by a hard-drinking, unscrupulous robot), and he’s played by Noah Ringer who looks like he was custom-made for the role since he keeps his head shaved (I have a hard time believing that) and is already an expert in martial arts (which he probably had to learn when he kept getting his ass kicked for being the only bald kid in his elementary school).

There’s also a photo “Slumdog Millionaire’s” Dev Patel as the villainous Zuko (who is actually a character of Chinese origin in the show but all foreigners are apparently the same so whatevs) which you can check out after the jump.