The Western live-action remake of Akira is back in production, this time with a much smaller budget ($90 million), a new director (Jaume Collet-Serra) and a possible new front-runner for a star: Garret Hedlund of Tron Legacy, according to an AceShowBiz.com article.
The new project has a tentative start date of March 2012, with Harry Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves still providing the screenplay.
Akira has been trapped in development hell (or at least purgatory) for years on end. The IMDB notes in the "Trivia" section for the original film that Sony Pictures once considered bankrolling their own live-action version, but scotched the idea when the budget went intro the hundreds of millions -- at a time when that really was a lot of money for a film.
More recently, Warner Brothers had tried to get the new Akira off the ground after licensing the rights to the story for some seven figures from Kodansha, but again the size of the projected budget was daunting. The last director on the project, Albert Hughes, left over "creative differences", after the project had already drawn fire for having a whitewashed cast. An early version of the script was also leaked and drew derision as well.
Through all of this, I've maintained the same stance: a Westernized Akira isn't Akira at all. The original is rooted in its origins too deeply to be transplanted, and there's still no sign the people involved understand this in the slightest.
Image: Akira. Image courtesy Pricegrabber.
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