Poor Mojo's Newswire

JW: Because it was awesome. The writers pitched it, with Illyria turning into Fred, and I was like, "Uh, okay, we have to do that, really, now." You squeeze all the juice out that you can. That was one of my favorite moments that we shot. If you're going to go out, go out hard. If you just go, "Well, off to another mystery. Here we are, arm in arm," that ain't an ending.

AVC: Do you regret making that decision, since you're planning to continue the series after all?

JW: Most people in my universe get more work after they're dead. Look at Harmony. If we had suddenly been given a reprieve, there would not have been a single episode without Wesley in it, dead or not. He'd have been given an eleventh-hour stay of execution. That has to do with my love of Wesley, and let's face it, my love of Alexis Denisof, who is, apart from being a dream to work with, staggeringly versatile.

Shyamalan will write, direct and produce the adaptation, which Nick hopes will turn into a three-picture series with Shyamalan's continuing involvement. The project marks the first time that Shyamalan, who is known for crafting original screenplays, will direct material he didn't create. It also is a rare foray for him into the kids pic arena, though he did flirt with directing one of the "Harry Potter" movies and did co-write 1999's "Stuart Little."

Created by Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, "Avatar" is set in a world balanced on four nations -- Water, Earth, Fire and Air. In each society, there are masters who can manipulate their native elements -- Waterbenders, Earthbenders, Firebenders and Airbenders -- while the one person who can master all four is the Avatar.

For those executives, I present a very brief, very simple primer in understanding geeks: We want this stuff to be done right because we’ve lived it for our entire lives and know it better than any of you ever will. We’ve played with the action figures and written the fan fiction and crammed fifteen of our friends into the hotel room so we could afford to go to the conventions where we buy T-shirts that say HAN SHOT FIRST because, goddammit, this stuff is our lives. Before we could talk to girls, there was Princess Leia. Before we had cars, there was the Batmobile. Before we could find escape from the horrors of modren life in a bottle, we escaped into the pages of comic books and science fiction magazines.

These stories that you buy and put on the big screen may just be numbers on a yearly accounting to you, but they are more than that to us. To us, they are something that brings us together and makes us part of an exclusive (and frequently stinky, unfortunately) club.

For example, while I walked down the middle aisle of the convention hall on Thursday, I passed a huge Lucasfilm booth. A scene from Star Wars played on a giant LCD screen: Darth Vader tells Grand Moff Tarkin that he senses something he hasn’t sensed in a long time. Without even thinking about it, I spoke along with Vader as he said, “Obi-Wan is here. The Force is with him!” There were about two dozen Star Wars Geeks watching the scene. All of us unselfconsciously spoke the quote aloud, and then immediately grinned at the shared experience.