Hollywood has been plotting a remake of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira for almost two decades.
The project has a complicated and somewhat controversial history, but Leonardo DiCaprio
remains attached as producer, and he seems determined to make the live-action Akira a
reality.
We’ve got all the details right here.
When Akira dropped in 1988, bootleg copies spread across U.S. campuses like wildfire.
Leonardo DiCaprio was a teenager when Akira hit the States, and it clearly made a big
impression on him.
The Oscar winner has been a big fan of anime for years now, Akira in particular.
His production company Appian Way got involved with the Warner Bros.-led remake back in 2008,
and the first thing DiCaprio did was put the fans at ease.
He told MTV:
"I'm a big fan of Japanese anime.
[...] I know there's a lot of loyal fans out there of the project and die-hard fans, so
we're going to try to do the best job we possibly can and we're not going to make the movie
until the script is in the right shape."
After Earth writer Gary Whitta was the man tasked with penning the screenplay.
According to Whitta, an Akira trilogy was being quietly planned, but the first installment
faltered.
Director Ruairi Robinson, best known for 2013 sci-fi The Last Days on Mars, later revealed
that producers put the project on the back-burner for financial reasons.
He said:
"They couldn't get the budget under 200 million bucks for that draft, which was a bit rich
for what was proposed as an R-rated movie with no stars."
Warner Bros. had Robinson put together a sizzle reel, and the Irish filmmaker even shot some
test footage for the film, recreating some iconic Akira shots.
Akira takes place three decades after Tokyo is leveled by a devastating explosion.
The mega city that springs up in the aftermath is Neo-Tokyo, home to the young biker gang
that the story revolves around.
When one of the boys develops powerful psychokinetic abilities, the city faces destruction all
over again.
It's a big-budget story, which is probably why DiCaprio and his partners at Warner Bros.
decided to film the whole movie in California.
Making Akira totally in-state means it qualifies for an 18.5 million dollar tax credit allocation,
Warner Bros. confirmed.
The studio told Deadline:
“We are thrilled with the opportunity to shoot Akira in California.
The availability of top-notch crew members, plus the wide variety of location choices
and predictable weather are second to none.”
Needless to say, fans of the original are deeply concerned about this move.
The setting and aesthetic of Akira are central to its appeal, and recreating this in the
Golden State won’t be easy.
Taika Waititi was attached to the Akira remake before his first Marvel movie made him a household
name in Hollywood.
The New Zealander opened up about his plans for Akira while promoting 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok,
revealing that he intends to take inspiration from Otomo’s original manga, not the anime.
Waititi told The Hollywood Reporter:
"Who wants to see a shot-for-shot remake of the film?
Nobody.
Also, you have to make it entertaining.
I think it's really dangerous to make these films very serious cyber punk.
There was a time and place for that and there may be a time and place for that tone again,
but you have to make fresh takes on things."
Waititi is reportedly co-writing the movie with Always Be My Maybe scribe, Michael Golamco.
When Dazed caught up with Waititi in 2018, he revealed that the script was still in the
early stages of development.
He said:
"I haven't really started to get my head around it yet.
There are six gigantic books to go through.
It's so rich.
But Akira is one of my favorite films; my mum took me to see it when I was 13 and it
changed my life."
Filming the movie in the States is one thing, but setting it there is another entirely.
In April 2019, Production Weekly shared what appeared to be the first synopsis for DiCaprio
and Waititi's Akira, and it made some pretty grim reading for fans of the source material.
There were a ton of fundamental changes, including moving the action from Neo-Tokyo to Neo-Manhattan.
The synopsis read:
"When a young man's telekinesis is discovered by the military, he is taken in to be turned
into a super weapon and his brother [must] race to save him before Manhattan is destroyed
by his powers.
Kaneda is a bar owner in Neo-Manhattan who is stunned when his brother Tetsuo is abducted
by Government agents."
Films like John Wick prove that Manhattan offers the perfect palette for this kind of
story, and some fans may have been willing to get on board with this had it been the
only change.
In Otomo's story, teenagers Kaneda and Tetsuo are long-time friends, not brothers.
The fact that Kaneda now owns a bar suggests that he and Tetsuo will be aged up for the
movie, but according to another industry website, this won’t be the case.
Backstage has since released what appears to be a casting call for Akira, and it reveals
that producers are looking for age appropriate actors to play Tetsuo and Kaneda, who will
be 17- and 18-years-old in the movie.
The whole Neo-Manhattan idea actually dates back to when Warner Bros. first negotiated
a deal for Akira in 2002.
Blade director Stephen Norrington was hired, but concerns about his involvement were raised
after he told The Hollywood Reporter that he planned to make the story, quote, “more
accessible,” presumably to western audiences.
When Norrington departed the project, the studio turned to Ruairi Robinson and Gary
Whitta, who tried to remain faithful to the source material on a technicality.
In their version of Akira, Manhattan had been sold and was legally foreign territory, owned
and populated by the Japanese.
Does this mean the leads would have been Japanese?
Probably not.
Whitta told Collider:
"It wasn't New Tokyo, but there were Americans who kind of lived in little Americanized quarters
of it.
I felt it was a way to do a kind of cool Western-Eastern fusion of the two ideas — not fully Japanese,
not fully westernized."
In other words, he dug the cool bikes and the whole cyberpunk thing, but he wanted a
Hollywood star to lead the charge.
Keanu Reeves once came very close to playing the part of Kaneda in the live action Akira
movie.
When the Robinson-Whitta version fell through, Warner Bros. hired Book of Eli co-director
Albert Hughes and Harry Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves.
Reeves became their target, but despite some constructive talks, the Matrix star ultimately
decided to pass.
It was a huge blow for the project - Warner Bros. reportedly shut down Akira's pre-viz
department and sent most of the staff it had working on the film home.
It turns out Reeves wasn’t the first actor the studio contacted about the role of Kaneda.
Warner Bros. reportedly reached out to Garrett Hedlund, Chris Pine, Michael Fassbender, Joaquin
Phoenix and even Justin Timberlake, while Robert Pattinson, Andrew Garfield and James
McAvoy were said to be in contention for the role of Tetsuo.
When fans discovered that a version of Akira starring Justin Timberlake was a very real
possibility, they lashed out.
One person who was particularly vocal about the all-white shortlist of actors was George
Takei.
The Star Trek legend predicted that Warner Bros. would have a huge bomb on its hands
if it whitewashed Akira.
He told The Advocate:
"If they're going to do that, why don't they do something original, because what they do
is offend Asians.
[...] The tradition in Hollywood has always been to buy a project, change it completely
and flop with it.
I think it’s pointless, so I thought I would save Warner Bros. a bit of failure by warning
them of what will most likely happen if they continue in that vein.”
This is exactly what happened to Paramount after it cast Scarlett Johansson as The Major
in its remake of ‘90s anime classic, Ghost in the Shell.
The studio ultimately admitted that the whitewashing backlash badly hurt the movie, which was a
critical and commercial failure.
It seems like Warner Bros. is heeding the signs - a casting call put out by the studio
appeared to confirm that it was looking for Asian actors for the lead roles.
Run A ll Night director Jaume Collet-Serra replaced Albert Hughes in 2011, but it wasn't
long before he hit a brick wall.
He was already working with a reduced budget of 90 million dollars, and sources suggested
that Warner Bros. wanted to drop that figure again, aiming to spend as little as 60 million
on Akira.
In 2014, Collet-Serra confirmed that he was still trying to get a scaled-down version
made.
Unfortunately, the Spanish director also made some incredibly ill-advised comments about
Otomo's story.
He told Coming Soon:
"Nobody's interesting.
Tetsuo's interesting because weird s--- happens to him, and Kaneda is so two-dimensional.
That's part of the Japanese culture, they never have strong characters.
They're used as a way to move the other philosophy forward."
Unsurprisingly, Collet-Serra soon found himself out of the picture.
Jordan Peele was linked to Akira not long after his Oscar-winning directorial debut
Get Out premiered, though he quickly decided that taking charge of a Hollywood remake wasn’t
for him.
The actor and filmmaker told horror website The 13th Floor that he was capable of directing
the new Akira, he just didn’t want to.
Peele said:
"Akira is one of my favorite movies, and I think obviously the story justifies as big
a budget as you can possibly dream of.
But the real question for me is: Do I want to do pre-existing material, or do I want
to do original content?
At the end of the day, I want to do original stuff."
Peele’s rejection came on the back of George Miller declaring himself out.
The Australian director was asked about Akira after 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road became a
roaring success, but he couldn’t fit it into his busy schedule.
He told Yahoo:
“There was talk of [Akira].
But I’ve got so many things on my dance card, I don’t have the time to do everything."
In May 2019, Akira fans got some much-needed good news regarding the long-gestating live-action
adaptation — Warner Bros. had finally set a release date.
Taika Waititi's film was going to hit cineplexes on May 21, 2021, the studio confirmed, but
another huge development was just around the corner.
In July 2019, news that Waititi had agreed a deal to helm another Thor movie broke.
It was great news for Marvel fans, but it was a cruel blow for those who have been waiting
patiently for Akira.
The proposed schedule for Thor: Love & Thunder clashed with that of Akira, and the latter
film was put on hold indefinitely as a result.
Waititi remains attached, but Akira is now back in limbo, and the headache continues.
Any new version of Akira still has to go through Katsuhiro Otomo.
When the Japanese artist, writer and director sat down with Forbes in 2017, he revealed
that he was, quote, “basically done” with Akira, having finished his original manga
and helmed his very own anime version.
Otomo confirmed that he's happy for a new filmmaker to take Akira in a different direction,
so long as he gets final approval.
He said:
"I accepted the offer for a live-action Akira to be made, so I am generally okay with whatever
they want to do with it.
However, I did give one major condition to a live-action version and that is that I had
to check and approve the scenario.
As always, the fundamental question on adapting anything is whether you follow the host work
strictly or do something new with it."
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