AKIRA: Jordan Peele Reveals Why He Declined Warner Bros.' Offer To Helm Live-Action Adaptation

AKIRA: Jordan Peele Reveals Why He Declined Warner Bros.' Offer To Helm Live-Action Adaptation

Akira has been trapped in development hell for what feels like forever, and Nope director Jordan Peele has now revealed why he chose to turn down Warner Bros.' offer to helm the live-action adaptation...

By JoshWilding - Feb 01, 2023 12:02 AM EST
Filed Under: Akira
Source: Happy Sad Confused (via AnimeMojo.com)

As we're sure you already know, Akira is a 1988 Japanese animated cyberpunk action film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo. A beloved and iconic classic, talks of a live-action adaption have persisted for years but never really gone anywhere. 

Attempts were first made by Sony Pictures in the 1990s, and Warner Bros. has been trying to get something, anything, off the ground since the early 2000s. Filmmakers Stephen Norrington (Blade), Ruairi Robinson (The Last Days on Mars), Albert and Allen Hughes (The Book of Eli), and Jaume Collet-Serra (Black Adam) have all been attached at some point, as has Taika Waititi.

The Thor: Ragnarok director seemingly came close to making Akira after he was attached to the project in 2019 with a planned 2021 release date. Alas, it fell by the wayside during the pandemic (he's since focused on the MCU and Star Wars).

Among the names attached to Akira over the years has been Get Out and Nope director Jordan Peele. However, the filmmaker has now revealed why he rejected Warner Bros.' offer to take the helm of a movie he'd once dreamed of stepping behind the camera to bring to life on screen. 

"It’s a project I’m so passionate about. I’m glad I didn’t do it because I feel like...staying away from that, trying to interpret that IP just set me on the path to create something new," he tells Happy Sad Confused's Josh Horowitz (via AnimeMojo.com). 

"But I want to see Neo-Tokyo. I want to see an all-Japanese cast. I want to feel immersed in the world, the way of the films in the manga."

Despite not taking the helm of Akira, Peele did pay homage to the movie in Nope when Keke Palmer's character brought a motorcycle to a sliding stop Kaneda-style. 

For the time being, we're no closer to seeing this movie become a reality and, as far as we're aware, no one is currently attached to the project. Multiple Akira screenplays are probably sitting in Warner Bros.' headquarters, but there must be a reason they weren't made!

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ObserverIO
ObserverIO - 1/31/2023, 12:05 PM
Trilogy. Only way.
marvel72
marvel72 - 2/1/2023, 7:20 AM
@ObserverIO - I would love to see Anime series but yeah it would have to be a trilogy of movies.
RealTurner
RealTurner - 2/1/2023, 12:07 AM
Watched the movie again recently. Easily one of the greatest things to ever come out of Japan, and just an incredible pinnacle of human artistic achievement. They couldn't repeat it today even if they wanted to; the people with the skills are gone, the technology is gone, the sheer bubble money it took to get it made is gone.

They need to start with a really good translation of the Japanese script, refer to both the manga and the anime in terms of composing the story, and reject injecting Western storytelling tropes. Of course, good live action anime adaptations are almost impossible to find, either in Japan or outside it. And it will never beat the original anyway. Almost nothing can.
PutinsGooch
PutinsGooch - 2/1/2023, 2:03 AM
They could just, you know, not bother. It'll be shit no matter what.
Chaos200
Chaos200 - 2/1/2023, 4:28 AM
I'm shocked they haven't made an anime series based on the manga, the manga. has soooo much content.
dragon316
dragon316 - 2/1/2023, 4:43 AM
@Chaos200 - is it good in manga I have read some manga and compared it to tv show and movies reading manga after watching it on anime format glad they manga parts out in anime I was watching.

I read spoilers manga of attack of titan fans hate ending they hope anime have different to manga version what I keep reading on it I feel same way by reading spoilers on that series
bobevanz
bobevanz - 2/1/2023, 5:18 AM
I'm hoping he still gets to make the Gargoyles movie he's been talking about. I can't believe Taika was the frontrunner for the Akira movie, could you imagine the cringe
FinnishDude
FinnishDude - 2/1/2023, 7:33 AM
@bobevanz - Is it weird that I kinda feel that you could make a great movie out of Gargoyles, basically adapting the five-part pilot, but as a franchise it would be best served as a Disney+ show? So much what made the original property great was the slow-burn seriliazed story-telling, which wouldn't be possible to replicate in two hour movies coming out every two to three years.
FinnishDude
FinnishDude - 2/1/2023, 7:29 AM
Honestly, any live-action Akira project should probably be done by a Japanese studio with a Japanese cast & crew. The source material is so strongly a social commentery on things that were going on in Japan that it would just feel weird to westernize all of that. Kinda like how so far every single Hollywood Godzilla movie has just been mindless blockbuster, without any of the "edge" (for lack of better term) the best of the original Japanese ones had, since they are thematically about Japan's fear of American nuclear weapons and Hollywood rarely dares to be critical of the American military in their big tentpole movies.

I could be proven wrong, of course, but I fear we would probably end up with something like The Ghost in the Shell, were they took very cerebral source material and just made a straightforward action movie out of it.
cadunovaes01
cadunovaes01 - 2/1/2023, 8:23 AM
I use to watch Akira one or two times per year (at least). It s a masterpiece. I love the homage that Peele includes in Nope ( and I think that scene where he shows people stuck inside Jean Jacket is another visual reference to Akira, when Tetsuo loses control on his form and start to absorb people)
imnotwearinghockeypants
imnotwearinghockeypants - 2/1/2023, 9:34 AM
It's because it should never be made.
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