Hughes Brothers Negotiating to Direct 'Akira'

The on-again/off-again Akira live-action remake is back on, and according to Vulture, it has falled to Allen and Albert Hughes, late of The Book of Eli. That film, incidentally, may or may not make it to $100 million in the US, but even if it does, it will have to really pick up steam overseas to be considered much of a success. However, producers and studios definitely think the Hughes Brothers are back in the mix. Over the weekend, it was revealed that the duo had been brought into the discussion about the revamped Planet of the Apes flick over at Fox, and now warner Bros. and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way are negotiating with them for Akira. It's debatable whether such a film is a good idea, however, because it will necessarily bring about many changes just by being live-action instead of animated, it's hard to look at Katsuhiro Otomo's manga and not see viability beyond the anime adaptation, which is now over 20 years old. Unless you're just a purist, I don't think Akira is any more off-limits than any other book, movie, or TV show. Maybe they screw up this version of it, maybe they get it right, but these things don't exist in a vacuum, so I say let 'em try. As with most backlash-ready projects like this, the worst that can happen is that a live-action Akira introduces a new audience to the original. As I've pointed out before, the Wizard of Oz we all know was the 13th version of that story produced in a 30-year span. Who's to say they should just leave everything that's been done alone? Here's an interesting note in all of this from Vulture, and perhaps it's something you've already thought of:

"Warners won’t proceed with a single, live-action remake of the film, which trimmed away the last half of the 2,182-page graphic novel in order to weigh in at just over two hours. Instead, we hear that the studio is planning to make Akira in two parts, with the first three volumes of the six-volume manga making up the first film, due out next year."

The "next year" part, granted, is a bit more of a news item, but the fact that they'll split the novel up really shouldn't be. In fact, if you're one of those who thinks it's best not to make one live-action Akira film, you probably have to admit that breaking up the story into multiple parts is a better way to stay true to the content, tone, and scope of the manga.

Comments

[J.Bradley]

It's interesting, I've always thought the Hughes brothers should adapt "Domu: A Child's Dream" - another Katsuhiro manga. The rumor for the past few years has been they were going to transplant it to New York and the two main characters would be brothers and they were going to adapt the ENTIRE manga series in two parts, like the "Matrix", "Lord of the Rings", etc., etc. The basic premise is a good sci-fi story on it's own, it doesn't HAVE to be a DIRECT adaptation of the manga OR anime. "The Book of Eli" shows they've got the visual style. I think this is a good development.

[A.Wake]

With Hollywood running out of source material and planning reboots of remakes it would be awesome seeing the Hughes brothers tackle Akira. I'm sure that ghost in the shell is being looked at in the same way, but it's still great source material.

The manga of Akira is awesome in terms of visual, style, character development, settings and ofcourse the story. Let's not forget the anime movie which was pretty amazing as well, can't imagine the awesomeness of some scenes with the use of CGI. If handled properly, a live action adaption will smash the box office and being the recognizable brand that it is also on a global scale.

Just head into pre-production already and get going!

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