Warner Bros. Courts New Akira Director

[Logan Westbrook]

Warner Bros. Courts New Akira Director

A director with a reputation for delivering on time and on budget could be just what the Akira movie needs.

Following the departure of Albert Hughes from its live-action Akira remake, Warner Bros. is now in talks with a new director. Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra is in line to take over the project. Collet-Serra's most recent movie was Unknown, a thriller starring Liam Nesson, which came out earlier this year.

Collet-Serra has also worked directed movies like Orphan, and House of Wax, which, among others, starred Paris Hilton. According to Variety [http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118039904?refCatId=13 ], he has a reputation for delivering movies on time and on budget, which may mean that Akira will finally make it out of the planning stages and actually reach the big screen.

Of course, that may be something of a mixed blessing, as by all accounts the script has been thoroughly westernized, with the story now set in New Manhattan, rather than Neo Tokyo. What's more, the studio is supposedly looking for white actors to play the lead roles of Tetsuo and Kaneda, both of whom will presumably be renamed.

A new setting and new character names don't automatically mean that the movie will be bad, but it hasn't inspired a lot of confidence among Akira fans. Of course, alienating the existing audience may still pay off if Warner can make a movie that more people can identify with.

Source: via Bleeding Cool [http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/07/14/yet-another-director-attached-to-akira]







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[The Diabolical Biz]

Although I haven't seen Akira (although I'm hopefully seeing it this summer in the Barbican), American remakes are rarely a great thing. However worse are the remakes that never come out, cost too much, and then on top of that, just to add insult to injury, suck.

Still, hopefully by the time this comes out/comes close to coming out I'll have seen it and can be pleasantly surprised/bitterly disappointed.

Also,

 

[Casual Shinji]

If something has this much trouble being born, it probably shouldn't have been conceived in the first place.

 

[standokan]

I hope the movie gets cancelled because it'll probably be horrible.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I thought this project was cancelled...

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/07/13/akira-live-action-film-dead-chris-weston/?a_dgi=aolshare_facebook

 

[ChildofGallifrey]

I like the cast that was attached (at least at one point), but this just needs to die. Or, at the very least, change the title. It's my Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within argument all over again; the movie wasn't anywhere near as terrible as people make it out to be, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the supposed source material, so the public ripped it a new one. If they called it something other than Akira and just dropped the pretense that it's supposed to be based on the anime film, then half the backlash would go away.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I usually roll my eyes at how fans will grab their torches & pitchforks upon the news that their favorite thing might be another thing regardless of potential. But as Robert Brockway [http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-actual-live-action-akira-script-worse-than-you-think/] has informed us, this movie has NO potential. Be sure to read the first article to let it all sink in how monumentally bad this idea is.

I don't need to read an article to see how INCREDIBLY bad it is to take a beloved Japanese story that is swamped with Japanese culture and then taking it and trying to make it Westernized by changing the characters and the setpieces. This is crazier than what Uwe Boll did with Alone in the Dark.... along with every other damn movie he's ever made.

 

[ckam]

Can't this project just die? It's kind of just another horror movie from the way they're going.

 

[Username Redacted]

I like the cast that was attached (at least at one point), but this just needs to die. Or, at the very least, change the title. It's my Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within argument all over again; the movie wasn't anywhere near as terrible as people make it out to be, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the supposed source material, so the public ripped it a new one. If they called it something other than Akira and just dropped the pretense that it's supposed to be based on the anime film, then half the backlash would go away.

If Justin Timberlake is still associated with this project then I'm going to need to respectfully disagree about the casting. However we're very much in agreement that nothing good will come of this project and that it should just go away.

 

[fulano]

I could care less if it is Westernized. Anyone that has read the manga or even seen the movie knows that it being a japanese product is not essential to the identity of the piece than, say, the trilogy of chinese films that spawned The Departed filmed than Martin Scorcese.

If the movie is bad, and that's not a big if, it won't be because it was westernized.

 

[Random Argument Man]

Seen the original Akira and I remember it for being pretty fucked up. I still don't remember what the plot was about. I don't really care if the remake tanks at the box offices and critics hate it. Pretty much everything that had development problems tends to finish with a questionnable product. (I'll put a "with only a few exceptions" just in case).

 

[comedian2603]

This is very simple. When the anime was made of Akira,they had to leave out a hell of a lot of the mammoth manga that it was adapted from. The anime is awesome,if a little rushed in places,and that's considering it's directed by the guy who wrote the original manga. What possible hope in hell does anyone have of doing an American version of it without any understanding of the original in the first place? The film will be absolutely terrible. There's a reason why the Japanese have never attempted to do a live action version themselves,it's because they know it just wouldn't work. Hollywood,do me a favour,stop trying to remake films that you have no grasp of in the first place.

 

[Genixma]

Well there goes my childhood.

 

[moosek]

They would have to really rework the premise of Akira to make it work for live action. Casting, setting, locations, etc. People aren't so much worried about the actual adaptation of the idea, but I can understand why fans hate it. The movie industry tends to fuck things up when it comes to adapting original or foreign ideas.

It would be cool to see some of the anime's set pieces on the big screen. I would hope they would cast some unknowns as Kaneda and Tetsuo.

 

[lord.jeff]

While I hold little hope for this movie, I really want it to be good just because then I can listen to the anime fans eat there words, it's not going to suck cause it's an American movie it's going to suck because it's a bad movie.

 

[Axelhander]

Akira is wildly overrated and Unknown was massively cornball (in a bad way), but this combination of franchise and director... I dunno, it might just work.

 

[Lazarus Long]

It certainly is a mixed blessing. On one hand, AmerAkira is a terrible idea. On the other, nothing about this idea has even a passing familiarity with good. Sort of like a chocolate/Dutch chocolate mix.