Two weeks after Paramount Pictures’ The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender movie leaked online, a person suspected of being behind the leak has been arrested.
According to the Straits Times, police in Singapore have arrested a 26-year-old man accused of what’s been called one of the largest movie leaks in recent memory. According to the publication, police discovered that the leaker gained unauthorized remote access to the server on which the animated film was stored, leading him to allegedly download and upload clips of the film online. The film was later reposted on social media in its entirety.
The Straits Times reports that the accused leaker is now under investigation for unauthorized access to computer material—an offense that carries a potential seven‑year prison sentence, a fine of up to $50,000, or both.
When clips of The Legend of Aang first hit the internet on April 12 on X/Twitter by user @ImStillDissin, the prevailing theory was that the film had been leaked internally, seeing as how the account coupled its upload with the caption “Nickelodeon accidentally emailed me the entire Avatar aang movie.”
However, a report from the Hollywood Reporter revealed that the leak didn’t come from within Paramount but from a hacker from PeggleCrew—the same troupe behind an infamous 2016 cyberattack on the hosting website FossHub.
“I saw it’s just a Paramount+ thing, so I decided I’d troll a little bit,” ImStillDing told THR, noting that they didn’t even know what The Legend of Aang even was before adding their not leaking the entire movie was “not necessarily out of respect to Paramount.” Either way, the whole film eventually wound up online for all to see.
The Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom has been in turmoil in the wake of the leaks hitting the internet. On the one hand, fans felt jilted by Paramount, which had a history of not caring deeply about the franchise, to the point where the first substantial peek at the film wasn’t in the form of a poster or a trailer but a Target T-shirt fans randomly spotted in the wild promotion.
That, coupled with the fact that the movie’s originally planned theatrical release was shifted to streaming on Paramount+, only added fuel to the fire, leading some fans to watch the leaked version of the film in protest.
Even Avatar actors have gotten involved. Actors like Michaela Jill Murphy, the original voice actor for Toph Beifong, have shared TikTok videos imploring folks to avoid watching leaked clips out of respect for the animators at Flying Bark, who put their heart and soul into bringing The Legend of Aang to life.
“If you want to be respectful, and if you want to know how I feel, stop sharing it. Stop consuming it. Stop talking about it. And watch it when it comes out,” Murphy said. “That’s what I’m doing. And if you want to respect the creators and respect the cast and respect me and respect the art, then stop sharing it and editing it and looking at it and commenting about it.”
We worked on the aang movie for years with the expectation that’d we’d get to celebrate all of our hard work in theaters.. just to see
people unceremoniously leak the film and pass our shots around on twitter like candy.. (1/3)— jul 🐯 (@papajoolia) April 14, 2026
Animator Julia Schoel also took to social media to voice her frustration—not just over the film leaking but over the near-total absence of promotion. In the same breath, she used the moment to spotlight the artists who poured themselves into bringing the movie to life, a story that follows an adult Aang and his crew reuniting for another whirlwind adventure.
“I don’t like seeing people use Paramount’s awful decision to remove the movie from theaters to justify leaking it. I totally understand folks not wanting to pay for/support Paramount+, but pirating the movie after its release would have at least been better than this,” Schoel wrote. “This is incredibly disrespectful to all of the hard work the artists put in.”
io9 reached out to Paramount for comment on whether the studio still plans on releasing the film on Paramount+
Should Paramount stay the course, fans can look forward to watching the first of three Avatar films when it officially releases on Paramount+ this October.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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