Hollywood is still trying to push the live-action anime adaptations that they believe will be big as the Marvel’s franchises and now want to tap a Marvel Studio director to do just that! Warner Brothers have their eyes on Taika Waititi who helmed the upcoming ‘Thor: Ragnarok‘ to bring ‘Akira’ to the big screen.
To get the rights for ‘Akira‘ Warner Brothers spent a seven-figure payout so this isn’t a project that will likely be shelved at all. The original plan was to take the six-volume manga and create two live-action films based around that which would make it a much crazier concept than the cult classic anime which many of you have likely already seen.
The initial story resolves around Kaneda who is the leader of a biker gang and his friend Tetsuo. After the latter of the two is kidnapped and experimented on, he is injured which is something that persists going forward and develops powers that are off the charts. For those who thought what had happened to Tetsuo in the anime was insane, things just get more ramped up from there as others with powers get involved and multiple governments try to intervene.
As this was originally released in the 80s and told the story of our world in 2019, some liberties with the source material are quite expected to happen.
Honestly, with everything that ended up going on in the graphic novels, I would think that keeping this tale to only two movies would still mean cutting quite a bit of detail.
The contracts aren’t signed yet, but if Waititi does like Warner Brothers’ offer, he would likely schedule it for after his current Fox project which is a World War II-era film titled ‘Jojo’s Rabbit.’ There has been a slew of directors and actors who have been contacted or shown interest in telling this tale though it never seems to come together. We’ll see if this is when it finally happens.
Since Warner Brothers are going to make this movie one way or another, do you think that Taika Waititi is the person to bring ‘Akira’ to the big screen or would you rather see another director tackle it?
Source: Screen Rant
