The opportunity of a live-action take of the 1988 anime film Akira from Warner Bros is not, as Deadline has confirmed that the best have lapsed, now reverted again to manga writer Kodansha.
The film directed by Katsuhiro Ôtomo follows teenage biker gang member who turns right into a rampaging psychic psychopath after a secret navy challenge endangers Neo-Tokyo. The protag learns he has telekinetic skills that are harmful to the phrase. His greatest buddy is the one man who can cease him.
The Burbank, CA lot has had the film rights since 2002 with administrators like Stephen Norrington, Albert Hughes, Jaume Collet-Serra and Taika Waititi circling. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian method was circling and at one level, Akira, had an $18.5M California Tax credit score. Boardwalk Empire star Michael Pitt was even hooked up to the challenge at one level, after which Garret Hedlund. Kristen Stewart, Helena Bonham-Carter and Ken Watanabe even kicked the tires on Akira.
Right here’s the factor: turning anime into dwell motion motion pictures or perhaps a TV sequence is tough. Two of essentially the most prolific tasks had been failures: Paramount turned 1995’s Ghost within the Shell right into a $110M large display screen take starring Scarlett Johansson. The film tanked grossing simply over $40M and underneath $170M worldwide, rejected by followers for whitewashing the unique. The consequence served as a harbinger to movement image studios to keep away from anime large display screen adaptation. Netflix made a 2021 sequence Cowboy Bebop starring John Cho, Mustafa Shakir and Daniella Pineda. In a complete shock, the streamer axed a second season for the sequence lower than a month after it dropped again in December 2021. Shinichiro Watanabe, the unique creator of the Cowboy Bebop animated sequence, expressed to Forbes that he couldn’t watch the live-action take.
THR who first reported the story about Akira‘s proper as we speak says that growth went into eight figures over 20 years. Reportedly there’s a bidding conflict for Akira, however no events had been named.
