Deadline are reporting that Will Smith and son Jaden are set to join M. Night Shyamalan’s next directorial effort, a yet-to-be-titled sci-fi project. Written by Shyamalan and Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli), the film is set in the distant future and follows an estranged father and son who have to navigate a desolate planet after their space ship crashes.

In a stament from Columbia Pictures Shyamalan says:

“The chance to make a scary, science-fiction film starring Jaden and Will is my dream project”.

No doubt it is. After three high profile misfires in a row, Lady in the Water, The Happening and most recently, the critically lambasted The Last Airbender, which limped to a poor $131 million domestic on a reported $150 million budget only to be saved by it’s overseas haul of $187 million, Shyamalan will be looking to cash in on the box office clout of the Smith family and bring back the golden years of the early 2000s.

It will mark the second time the father and son duo have teamed up in front of the camera, the first being The Pursuit of Happiness in 2006. Daddy Smith also served as producer on Jaden’s breakout movie The Karate Kid last year (which has a sequel in the works).

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The Last Airbender of course! Ahead of the 83rd Academy Awards later today the The Golden Raspberry Award Foundation handed out its “best of the worst” Razzie Awards, with M. Night Shyamalan and Sex and the City 2 taking most of the gongs.

Here’s the full list of ‘winners’:

Worst Picture Winner 2010
The Last Airbender

Worst Actor Winner 2010
Ashton Kutcher (Killers and Valentine’s Day)

Worst Actress Winner 2010
Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis & Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City 2)

Worst Supporting Actor Winner 2010
Jackson Rathbone (The Last Airbender and Twilight Saga: Eclipse)

Worst Supporting Actress Winner 2010
Jessica Alba (The Killer Inside Me, Little Fockers, Machete and Valentine’s Day)

Worst Eye-Gouging Mis-Use of 3-D (Special Category for 2010!) Winner 2010
The Last Airbender

Worst Screen Couple / Worst Screen Ensemble Winner 2010
Sex and the City 2 Cast

Worst Director Winner 2010
M. Night Shyamalan (The Last Airbender)

Worst Screenplay Winner 2010
The Last Airbender (Written by M. Night Shyamalan)

Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel (Combined Category for 2010) Winner 2010
Sex and the City 2

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Paramount Home Entertainment will be giving people the opportunity to watch M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender in the comfort of their own homes, as it will be released on DVD and Blu-ray November 16th.

Despite being ripped to shreds by critics the film managed to make $280 million worldwide, however various reports have said Paramount spent a huge amount on marketing. The DVD and Blu-ray sales should push it into a profit, but I guess only Paramount will know the real numbers.

The DVD/Blu-ray Combo includes the following special features:

Disc One (Blu-ray):

• Feature Film (HD)
• Discovering The Last Airbender (nine-part documentary in HD)
  • Inspirations – Co-creators of the show and M. Night Shyamalan give insight into the inner journey the characters take
  • Spirituality – Explore the deeper spirituality that colors The Last Airbender
  • Heroes – Aang, Katara and Sokka journey together to save the world; behind-the-scenes piece provides a closer look at these characters and the actors
  • Greenland – With sub-zero shoots on glaciers and frozen rivers, travel with the filmmakers to Greenland to meet the locals and experience the magnificent landscapes captured for the powerful opening of the film
  • World – The sets, props, costumes and make-up that helped bring to life four unique nations in the film, each with a distinct look and style
  • Action – With the film’s “bending” rooted in Martial Arts, uncover Shyamalan’s process with Noah Ringer to create complex, heart-pounding action sequences
  • Effects – Closer look at the jaw-dropping cinematography and special effects that were created to blend seamlessly with ILM’s computer generated imagery
  • Music – Longtime creative collaboration between M. Night Shyamalan and composer James Newton Howard is celebrated in the film’s sweeping score
  • Finale – The journey culminates in one breathtaking moment on the ice wall
• Siege of the North (HD) – Get transported to the frozen realm of the Northern Water Tribe and the largest indoor film set ever built on the U.S. east coast
• Origins of the Avatar (HD) – Birth of the mythology from the original co-creators of the animated show, Mike DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.  Concept art from the popular series provides further perspective into how the story would eventually reincarnate into an epic feature film
• Katara for a Day (HD) – Spend a day on the set with Nicola Peltz
• Deleted Scenes (HD)
• Outtakes (HD)
• Avatar Annotations (Picture-in-picture on select scenes) – Insights with cast and crew

Disc 2 (DVD):

• Feature Film
• Digital Copy

THE LAST AIRBENDER single disc DVD and single disc Blu-ray each include:

• Origins of the Avatar (HD on Blu-ray)
• Deleted Scenes (HD on Blu-ray)
• Outtakes (HD on Blu-ray)

The Last Airbender is now available to pre-order on: DVD | Blu-ray

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Devil, which was originally called The Night Chronicles: Devil, had a bit of a name change following the critical panning of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender.

Universal must not have wanted the director’s name to have any impact on their upcoming psychological and supernatural horror, which actually looks quite interesting if the first official trailer is anything to go by.

The film stars Chris Messina, Bojana Novakovic, Bokeem Woodbine, Geoffrey Arend and Caroline Dhavernas, and follows a group of people trapped in a elevator who realize that the devil is among them.

Even though M. Night Shyamalan came up with the idea Brian Nelson (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night) wrote the script, with newcomers Drew Dowdle and John Erick Dowdle making their directorial debut with the film. Devil will be released on September 17th so we’ll be able to see if Shyamalan’s should now just focus on ideas, and not so much writing/producing/directing everything.

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We know the critics aren’t too fond of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender as it is currently the worst reviewed movie of 2010. But what about the fans? Surely those guys and girls who attended early screenings dressed up as characters from the movie found something they liked about it?

Well…not really. From Reelz Channel (via Rejects):

When a grown male suggests they should have seen The Twilight Saga: Eclipse instead you know you have failure on your hands…

…speaking of which The Vulture spoke with director M. Night Shyamalan by phone and were pretty blunt when asking him about the negative reviews his film has received:

Have you read the reviews for Last Airbender?
No, I haven’t.

Well, are you aware of the reviews?
No, actually.

Well, for the most part, critics have not been kind. Are you just ignoring them? Will you read them this weekend? Have you just not had time?
Are you saying that in general they didn’t dig it?

In general, no. Roger Ebert, who liked The Happening, did not. The first line of his review is, “The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category that I can think of and others still waiting to be invented.” How do you react to something like that?
I don’t know what to say to that stuff. I bring as much integrity to the table as humanly possible. It must be a language thing, in terms of a particular accent, a storytelling accent. I can only see it this certain way and I don’t know how to think in another language. I think these are exactly the visions that are in my head, so I don’t know how to adjust it without being me. It would be like asking a painter to change to a completely different style. I don’t know.

Fans and critics now have something to blame; his storytelling accent. Whatever that is.

M. Night also said that he has finished the first draft of the sequel and will know over the next few months whether he can take it further. I have a feeling he won’t.

Have you seen The Last Airbender yet? Is it as bad as everyone is saying, or did you find yourself enjoying it?

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I got slightly suspicious of The Last Airbender when we didn’t hear a word from the main character until the third or fourth trailer. Aang’s first words were “I don’t deserve their praise”, and looking back it’s quite funny considering The Last Airbender has received hardly any from critics who have seen the film. And when I say ‘hardly’ I mean it is currently the worst rated film of 2010, with a measly 8% on Rotten Tomatoes.

I guess this could have been foreseen (well…Aang does have a huge down arrow on his forehead). Each film from M. Night Shyamalan has been progressively worse than the previous one following his hailing as the ‘next Spielberg’ thanks to The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs. Many thought that The Last Airbender could be a chance for M. Night to redeem himself as a huge summer blockbuster has never crossed his path before, but he seems to have dug himself into a deeper hole by making the worst critically received movie of the year.

Here’s what a few critics are saying:

The New York Times:

The long-winded explanations and clumsy performances are made worse by graceless effects and a last-minute 3-D conversion that wrecks whatever visual grace or beauty might have been there.

Roger Ebert:

The dialogue is couched in unspeakable quasi-medieval formalities; the characters are so portentous they seem to have been trained for grade school historical pageants. Their dialogue is functional and action-driven. There is little conviction that any of this might be real even in their minds. All of the benders in the movie appear only in terms of their attributes and functions, and contain no personality.

Variety:

Even without one of Shyamalan’s trademark twist endings, “Airbender” easily fits into the helmer’s portfolio of brooding genre inversions: Here, we expect an epic martial-arts movie and instead get a soul-searching adolescent’s decision to spare his enemies — a character-driven approach that’s ill served by the largely amateur cast.

Metromix:

Tedious, overstuffed, visually flat … emotionally inert, filled with painfully expository dialogue and mostly poorly acted, it’s simply an all-around misfire.

But of course bad reviews don’t necessarily mean a poor box office. With The Twilight Saga: Eclipse taking over the weekend young males may be inclined to see The Last Airbender, however with a budget of over $280 million ($150 million to make, $130 million to market) Paramount will need Airbender to generate more than $580 million worldwide at the box office and on DVD to turn a profit.

I think M. Night Shyamalan may want to halt work on that sequel…

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Last year, M. Night Shyamalan struck a deal with Media Rights Capital and formed a label called “The Night Chronicles,” which has him developing and producing one film a year from 2010 to 2012. For the second feature in this deal, Night has joined forces with Buried screenwriter Chris Sparling for a supernatural thriller called Twelve Strangers. After the jump, we’ve got a bunch of info about Night’s other projects.

To recap: the first film in The Night Chronicles is a movie called Devil, which has one of the most simple and effective loglines I can remember: “A group of people are trapped in an elevator, and one of them is the devil.” It’s is post production now, and stars a lot of people I recognize by face, but not by name: Chris Messina, Caroline Dhavernas, Geoffrey Arend, Bokeem Woodbine, and Bojana Novakovic. Directed by John and Drew Dowdle, it will be released on February 11th, 2011.

Twelve Strangers is still shrouded in secrecy, but Deadline says it “involves a jury deliberating a case involving the supernatural.” I haven’t seen Buried yet, but if writer Chris Sparling can craft an interesting script that takes place entirely inside a coffin, it’s enough to make me curious about his future work. I haven’t completely bailed from the M. Night Shyamalan bandwagon, so perhaps his work as a producer will get him back in the creative groove and move his career forward again.

The enigmatic director has been shopping a new project around Hollywood, only allowing it to be read under the close supervision of one of his assistants. The Hangover and The A-Team star Bradley Cooper is attached to the untitled project, playing a father searching for his missing child who has to delve into the supernatural to locate the kid.

Shyamalan has had a bit of a fall from grace with his last few films – a fall that may or may not continue with the release of The Last Airbender next week. Do you think Night is better off as a producer, or would you like to see him remain in the director’s chair?

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Not only did the MTV Movie Awards provide us with a sneak peak at Harry Potter and the Death Hallows, we were also given a 1 minute clip from The Last Airbender.

From all of the trailers and TV spots we have seen it is clear that M. Night Shyamalan has delivered a visual treat, however there has been a surprising lack of dialogue, especially from Aang himself. Hopefully there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, and it’s not a cover up for poor dialogue.

Anyway, you can view the clip below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4K5DlryYOo

The Last Airbender stars Noah Ringer as Aang, Dev Patel as Zuko, Nicola Peltz as Katara, and will be released on July 2nd.

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I thought we had seen all of the big special effects shots from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender given the amount of trailers and TV spots that have been released, however it seems Paramount still have a few more they’ve been holding on to.

The Japanese marketing team have created probably the most epic trailer to date which is full of all the cool scenes we’ve seen before, along with some new ones.

Watch below:

The Last Airbender stars Noah Ringer as Aang, Dev Patel as Zuko, Nicola Peltz as Katara, and will be released on July 2nd. Will be you seeing it opening weekend?

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The trailers for The Last Airbender have been impressive so far, and even though I haven’t seen one single episode of the original cartoon they still get me quite excited to see the film.

Today Apple released the third (and hopefully not final) trailer, and it’s probably the best one yet. The special effects are on the verge of completion, which means we get to see some cool money shots such as Aang controlling a tidal wave, Aang creating a mini-tornado and a great shot of Aang freezing an enemy mid-flight.

Other cool scenes include shots of Appa (the Sky Bison), a Fire Nation lizard creature scaling a wall, and a talking dragon.

Watch below!

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan The Last Airbender stars Noah Ringer, Dev Patel, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone and will be released on July 2nd (in 3D!).

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