A couple of months ago it seemed that plans for a live-action Akira movie were dead. Although it had been in the works since early 2008 (and it was originally said that it was going to be fast-tracked for release this year), when it was announced that director Ruari Robinson was leaving the project, studio sources suggested the whole thing was ‘dead as a doornail’. However it now appears that reports of the film’s demise were pre-emptive, as Collider has managed to confirm that Children Of Men and Iron Man screenwriters Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby and busy at work on a script for the film.
They also found out that the adapatation will be set in a near-future post-apocalyptic Manhattan, with the iconic red motorcycle making it to the live-action version intact. However the reason everything’s taking so long is probably because Akira is definitely a tough thing to adapt. Although the Japanimation movie is a classic with a large fanbase, it’s more bizarre elements ensure that any studio looking to spend $150 million plus on a live-action version is going to be nervous about bringing it to the big screen (particularly the weird ending), but any major changes they make are likely to raise the ire of fans.
It’s also true that with the fairly faithful Watchmen not becoming a breakout hit, they may be even more jumpy about bringing another highly-conceptual, complex story to the big screen, without Hollywood-ising everything.
Although the Akira remake still has a long way to go before it makes it before the cameras, the film is still apparently a priority for Warner Bros. Personally we’d quite like to see what they do with a live-action Akira, as it could definitely make a good movie, although we can’t imagine it following the original all that closely.