“Some people are very protective”: what happened to the live-action ‘Akira’ remake?
The production line of live-action Hollywood movies based on popular anime and manga titles keeps on rolling despite inconsistent consistency and quality. However, despite the industry’s best efforts, the tough nut that is Akira remains firmly uncracked.
Scarlett Johansson’s ill-judged Ghost in the Shell was pilloried before it even released, James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez couldn’t steer Alita Battle Angel to enough money at the box office to justify a sequel, Dragonball Evolution was a trainwreck showcasing just how badly things can go wrong, the post-Matrix trilogy Wachowskis couldn’t stop Speed Racer from bombing, and Adam Wingard’s Death Note pissed off many fans of the source material.
Those are just a few examples that paint the picture of Stateside studios and production companies bungling the translations more often than not. As one of the greatest and most lauded examples the medium has ever seen, then maybe it’s for the best if any attempts to bring Katsuhiro Otomo’s classic 1988 cyberpunk spectacular to life with flesh-and-blood actors remain lodged firmly in development hell.
The feature-length version of Otomo’s manga unfolds 31 years after the Japanese government dropped a bomb on Tokyo after its experiment on children went awry, with bike-riding gang leader Kaneda setting out to save his best friend Tetsuo from a shady project until the latter’s supernatural powers explode into life in a fashion that doesn’t readily seem like the sort of bonkers feast for the eyes that would be done justice in a Hollywood-backed motion picture.
An Akira live-action film has been in the works since 2002, when Warner Bros first purchased the rights, but trying to bring Kaneda, Tetsuo, and the rest of the anime characters to life hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing. In fact, the stalled project has roped in so many names at various points during its existence that it’s beginning to look as though it’s destined never to happen at all.
Blade‘s Stephen Norrington was eyed for the job prior to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen nuking his entire career, while Ruairi Robinson announced in 2008 that he was planning to helm a two-part adaptation. When he left, From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes stepped into the breach before there was a major uproar after a leaked script purportedly emerged online that revealed huge deviations from the source material that led to accusations of whitewashing and Americanisation.
Jaume Collet-Serra took it on but vacated the director’s chair, George Miller turned it down, and Jordan Peele knocked it back before Taika Waititi took the reins in September 2017. He publicly announced his plans that “Asian teenagers would be the way to do it for me” in casting the lead roles to try and downplay any potential controversy, with a May 21st, 2021 release date pencilled into the calendar.
Akira was delayed when Waititi opted to return to Marvel for Thor: Love and Thunder, but the Academy Award-winning Jojo Rabbit writer and director continued to reiterate his commitment. Of course, the planned theatrical bow is a long way in the rear-view mirror at this point, but Akira isn’t completely dead and buried. Well, at least not yet.
In November 2023, Waititi confirmed to Inverse that he’s still attached to Akira and acknowledged that “some people are very protective over the film”. That stands out as an understatement, and while there’s nothing tangible to show for it after more than 20 years in development, the Oscar-winning director maintains that he plans to get around to it eventually. On the other hand, nobody would be all that surprised were it to drift back into the development ether for the umpteenth time.
