In news that’s sure to please many fans of the classic anime movie Akira and annoy a lot of others, it would seem that the live action of the film is now dead in the water. The film was formally announced over a year ago and was due to be directed Ruari Robinson and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company, Appian Way, and Warner Bros.
However, Bloody Disgusting is now saying that Robinson has left the project, which was due to be his feature length debut, and that the whole thing is now ‘dead as a doornail’. While it could have been an insanely cool movie, anyone who’s seen the original will understand the problems faced by anyone trying to adapt it for Hollywood. A lot of very odd things happen, and while the ending is a classic in anime circles, it’d be immensely difficult to turn it into something live action without the audiece just going “What the f***?” A lot of people do that anyway when watching the original version.
The 1988 flick is about set in a post nuclear war New Tokyo, where a member of a biker gang is forced to undergo government experiments to unlease his latent superpowers. The biker’s friend sets off to save him and ends up uncovering the truth of what happened with earlier experiments 30 years before. It’s all very odd, but looks superb and is well worth a watch, For our money, we’d have loved to see a live action version, but it appears it isn’t to be.