After more than two decades of languishing in Development Hell, Warner Bros. has finally relinquished the rights to Katsuhiro Otomo's seminal Cyberpunk manga, Akira, which had Taika Waititi attached to direct.
THR is reporting that the studio has decided not to move forward with the project, and have allowed the rights to the property to revert back to Kodansha, the publisher that first put out the original manga back in 1982. According to the trade, "producers and talent are said to be lining up to attach themselves to the property in preparation to be presented to select studio and streamers."
The news that Waititi was still planning to move forward with his Akira movie was met with a mixed response back in 2023 - especially after the lukewarm reception to Love and Thunder - but the filmmaker has revealed that he is a huge fan of the manga/anime, and that he did intend to cast race-appropriate actors (which wasn't always going to be the case).
There have been several attempts to adapt Akira over the years, and most of them were going to move the story to the U.S. and feature Caucasian actors in the lead roles. The script that came closest to becoming a reality also made Kaneda and Tetsuo brothers.
Get Out and Nope director Jordan Peele was also briefly attached to helm a version of Akira, and explained why he decided to pass on the opportunity during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast last year.
"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. 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."
Stephen Norrington, Albert Hughes, Jaume Collet-Serra were also on board at various points.
Akira is a very complex story, but at its core it's about two biker friends named Kaneda and Tetsuo who find themselves becoming mortal enemies when the latter begins to develop apocalyptic psychic powers, and a God-complex to match.
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In 1988 the Japanese government drops an atomic bomb on Tokyo after ESP experiments on children go awry. In 2019, 31 years after the nuking of the city, Kaneda, a bike gang leader, tries to save his friend Tetsuo from a secret government project. He battles anti-government activists, greedy politicians, irresponsible scientists and a powerful military leader until Tetsuo's supernatural powers suddenly manifest. A final battle is fought in Tokyo Olympiad exposing the experiment's secrets.