The road to a live action Akira has been a suitably long and arduous one, and the 1988 Katsuhiro Otomo anime adaptation of his own mammoth manga was not only a high point of the form, and an achievement considering the complexity and scale of the source material, but it led the way for us in the West to open our eyes to a wider, darker world.
In the twenty two years since the iconic red motorcycle blazed through the dystopian highways there has been talk (first with Sony and now Warner Bros) of making a live action film based on the Akira property. The cinematic landscape of early 90s Hollywood was changed with James Cameron’s Terminator 2, and while the world has rumbled on, the Akira project is still on the cards at the studio and Vulture have the story that The Hughes Brothers are in talks to direct.
The Book of Eli fared relatively well against the behemoth of Avatar and with the scriptwriters of Iron Man and Children of Men, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, on board crafting the two film adaptation, the makers of Dead Presidents and Menace II Society can certainly engage with the darker elements of corruption, both social and moral, inherent in the post apocalypse tale.
An official word is expected any time now.
