Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan was in New York last week kicking off the requisite press and publicity tour for his latest film, The Happening, which Fox opened wide last Friday.

Last Monday at 8:00 in the morning, I was part of an audience of 600-plus who came to hear Shyamalan talk about his upcoming film at the 2008 Licensing International Expo in New York. Except he wasn’t there to pump up The Happening; he was there to talk about his next project, The Last Airbender, a live-action version of the popular animated show Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The show just wrapped its third season on Nickelodeon, but the Nickelodeon Movies and Paramount Pictures co-venture hasn’t even gone into production yet, though it does have a release date: July 2, 2010.

A pair of Paramount suits were at the morning presentation—Paramount Film Group president John Lesher and Paramount Pictures vice chairman Rob Moore—as well as senior Nickelodeon execs Cyma Zarghami, president of Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group, and Nickelodeon & Viacom Consumer Products president Leigh Anne Brodsky. But Night was the undisputed shining star of the presentation.

Adorned in a stylish sports jacket and sporting a wireless headset, Shyamalan delivered “Night’s Gospel,” as he enthusiastically explained how he came to work on the film (he credits his daughter for introducing him to the action-oriented series) and that he called up Nickelodeon with his ideas for a live-action version and announced, “I think you’ve got Star Wars!” Images of some CGI action sequences and preliminary art flashed across a big screen as Shyamalan preached to a feverish audience, who were sweating out the first heatwave of the season. Night spoke for about 10 minutes, and the whole event was only a half-hour long, but it was definitely a happening.

Now they just have to make the movie, the step-by-step process of which Shyamalan promised will be documented and disseminated for all to see. And it’s fair to assume that licensors and major retailers will be kept informed on the development of The Last Airbender’s future licensing and merchandising programs.

There was a time—years ago—that a Hollywood movie’s premiere was the first big event in its public life. That changed in the early ’80s when the first glimpse of a trailer of a highly anticipated film took center stage. Not long thereafter (and with the growth of entertainment magazine TV shows and the Internet), it was the buzz about the deal to make the movie—the sale of a bestseller, the salary demands of a superstar and so on—that interested people. But apparently, the industry’s latest creation in early buzz-making is in energizing licensors and merchandisers about the potential of a possible franchise that hasn’t even gone into production yet. Art and commerce always meet, of course, but it appears they now shake hands even before they’ve been properly introduced. It’s a relationship dictated by mass merchants who plan their product lines and promotions months and years in advance.

“The Last Airbender is a living, breathing, organic brand that’s poised to explode,” Brodsky announced in her closing remarks, knowing all too well that the preliminary pyrotechnic had just gone off.