Ethan Rauch

College students like myself who are nearing the end of this chapter of our lives, and looking to the horizon as we contemplate the next steps in our ever-evolving endeavors and career choices, may find solace in the re-collections and perspectives of those who’ve been in familiar shoes to that of our own.

Caleb Williams, known by his screen-name of KnightGambit, is an insider reporter who has been covering a variety of shows and movies (a prominent one being the soon-to-release live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix) for many years now. When he was prompted with my request to speak to him about his history and upbringing in this field of work, as well as his own personal perspectives regarding the Avatar project (see the article here), Williams agreed to share his story.

As a reporter, Williams got his start writing about film and TV in high-school following the release of ‘The Incredible Hulk’ in 2008. At the time, he told me that he “didn’t know what [he] was doing,” as he was still getting started, but he learned more about the journalism industry as the years progressed and his activity within it flourished.

Williams got his start writing on Comicbookmovie.com, a website with user-generated content at the time, and one of his first areas of focus was M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘The Last Airbender’ film. He has extensively covered the new live-action adaptation of this show, in addition to other projects under companies like Disney, Warner Bros, and Universal Pictures.

After his time unofficially writing for Comicbookmovie.com, Williams started a Blogger site named Superhero Movies News. It was in 2015 that he later started Omega Underground with a partner, Christopher Marc, and some others that he had met on Twitter (the platform now known as X). Williams eventually sold the website to the Geeks World Wide company in 2018, and he told me that “after a year working as a staff writer for [them], I decided to leave and start over from scratch again.”

Williams then went on to start his own entertainment news media company, Knight Edge Media, in November 2019 – just some months before the beginning of the global pandemic in 2020. It was here that he adopted his screen-name of KnightGambit that he has been using ever since.

In these past few years, Williams has grown his site and reputation as an entertainment journalist. He’s reached a particular status point where he has actually been one of the first people to report on certain aspects of the ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ live-action adaptation.

When asked about his experience in covering the show since it really started ramping up its production in the autumn of 2021, and the general processes behind his role as a reporter, Williams had the following to say:

“Like most of the projects I report on in Knight Edge Media, I like to follow the behind-the-scenes production of a project instead of reporting on every single still or poster that is released during the marketing phase of a project (though I did do that here). So during production [of Avatar] I coordinated with the social media account ‘AvatarNews’ on many of the leaks we shared privately before releasing them to the public. Just to verify we heard the same thing from multiple sources.”

Williams also went on to specify some of the news he personally broke about the show.

“I was the one that was able to report on some of the castings including Rainbow Dickerson in an unknown role (guessed she would play Kya), Arden Cho in an unknown role (guessed she would play June), Sebastian Amoruso cast as Jet, Utkarsh Ambudkar cast as King Bumi,” Williams said. “As well as Takeshi Furukawa would compose the project.”

In addition to his reporting on actors being cast in specific roles for shows/movies, Williams also publishes, from time to time, some reflective, breakdown-based articles of the content he covers. One in particular, such as this article that was published on January 4th of this year, shows him delving into things like analytical/reflective dialogue about potential storytelling decisions the people behind the the Avatar adaptation can make in the future, concerning specific ethnic representations of cultures established in the show’s universe.

It was a great pleasure to be able to speak with Mr. Williams in a more formal state about his history with being an insider reporter, and it is my hope that in sharing his story, those of us in a position like myself are able to take his experiences and see them for what they are. It goes to show that if we have a goal in mind and stick to it, prosperous outcomes may be in store for us in the future.