Netflix announced on Twitter today that Daniel Dae Kim (Lost, Flack) has been cast as Fire Lord Ozai in their live action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Kim previously contributed to the Avatar-verse by voicing General Fong in the original series. Ozai is the villain of the piece, the latest in a line of oppressive and colonizing leaders of the Fire Nation. Ozai is not only the Fire Nation’s leader, he’s the dad of deuteragonist Prince Zuko and villainess/impulsive bangs-cutter Azula. His withholding parental style makes him the Logan Roy of A:TLA, a Bad Dad whose parenting failures make for great drama.
The live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series has been in the works since 2018. The remake generated new attention during the summer of 2020, when the cartoon hit Netflix and became everyone’s pandemic escape TV. In August of last year, the series’ original creators left the Netflix adaptation, with co-creator Bryan Konietzko called it a “negative and unsupportive environment†in an Instagram post. This is the second attempt at a live-action Avatar, with M. Night Shyamalan making a version starring the Confederate vampire from Twilight in 2010.