'Everything Leaks' — Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender Director Addresses Early Concept Photo Leaks | Comic Con 2026

While showing off an early concept photo of the aged-up Team Avatar at a San Diego Comic-Con panel on Thursday afternoon, Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender director Lauren Montgomery recalled one of the films' earliest leaks in a rollout that's been plagued by unfortunate leaks. The image in question was what Montgomery called the "Avengers shot," with the characters posing together that leaked out of CinemaCon in 2024 before it was taken down. "This was one of the very first funny stories about this image. We had a version of this image, exact same painting. The characters looked a little bit different," Montgomery said. "Our production designer Jake [Panian] was never really happy with it. And then Paramount comes to us and says, ‘We want to go to CinemaCon.’ Jake is, like, ‘Absolutely not. It's gonna leak.’ They're like, ‘No, no, no, no. It won't leak. Everything's safe.’ Everything leaks. [Jake]'s like, 'Well, if they're gonna leak it, I'm gonna repaint the whole thing.' And he did. And it looks beautiful, and it looks amazing, and we've used this image a lot of times. And of course, it leaked. Cell phone camera footage of it from a weird angle. And then it's used as, like, offic