Dante Basco Was Never Cast As Zuko In Animated 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' Movie
The actor who voiced the eventual Firelord for three seasons in the original 2005-2008 Nicktoon called the 2022 report “not real”
In December 2022, Avatar News reported that Dante Basco would be reprising his role as Firelord Zuko from the 2005-2008 Nicktoon Avatar: The Last Airbender in Avatar Studios’s animated film starring the four main heroes in early adulthood. At the time, the film was scheduled for October 10, 2025, but has since been pushed back to January 30, 2026. It turns out, just three months after the April casting announcement of the film where Zuko was conspicuously unmentioned, Basco debunked the reporting, calling it “a rumor” and “not real”.
During an Avatar reunion panel at Florida Supercon 2024 on either July 12 or 13, which featured Basco, Zach Tyler Eisen (Aang), and Jack DeSena (Sokka), he was asked about his return as Zuko. He succinctly responded, “That’s a rumor”. He elaborated “Right now, I’m just doing the podcast. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the newer stuff. As actors, you kind of just keep going on to the next thing and do the work and just trying to be as good as you can. I only have one voice though. They’re all going to sound very similar." The podcast he’s referring to is Avatar: Braving the Elements, covering everything in the world of the franchise. As of writing, it is headed into its fourth season, which will begin the exploration of the 2012-2014 sequel series The Legend of Korra, which starred his co-host Janet Varney as Korra, Aang’s successor as Avatar, where he recurred as Zuko’s grandson, Iroh II. After a tangent, Basco circled back to the original question and reiterated “The me playing Zuko thing is a rumor. That’s not real.”
Avatar News’s webmaster retired in September 2023, at the exact ten-year mark that they had been running it, seemingly due to conflicts with new work commitments. I will choose to believe they got bad info from someone and meant no malicious intent. The cast announced at CinemaCon in April consisted of K-Pop star Eric Nam as Aang, Dark Winds star Jessica Matten as Katara, American Ghosts star Roman Zaragoza as Sokka, and Nickelodeon legend Dionne Quan as Toph. Directed by Lauren Montgomery and co-directed by William Mata, the three-month delay was announced the week after, when Paramount made sure Transformers One wasn’t opening up the same day The Wild Robot but I don’t seem to have addressed it there, and if I did any later I don’t remember when.
Source: Popverse