Some movies spend an eternity in development hell before finally becoming a reality. Others become warnings to filmmakers or bedtime stories that keep Hollywood executives awake. The live action remake of AKIRA is one of those films. For years, everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio, Stephen Norrington, Allen and Albert Hughes, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zac Efron, Morgan Freeman, James Franco, Keanu Reeves, Keira Knightley, and Gary Oldman were involved and nothing happened. Most recently, ORPHAN and RUN ALL NIGHT director Jaume Collet-Serra was named the man in charge of the film. He even seemed to be making progress on developing a unique vision. Then, nothing.
At a recent press event for RUN ALL NIGHT, Collider caught up with the director and asked about the status of the film. Has there been any progress on AKIRA?
“No, no. There’s nothing.”
Having made two films in three years (NON-STOP and RUN ALL NIGHT), Collet-Serra is ready to take a break. That usually means they are not involved with a project any longer, but he could have just come out and said the project was dead. When pressed for further details on the status of the movie, Collet-Serra just said it is up to Warner Bros when it happens.
AKIRA has always seemed like a bad idea for a remake. The anime is regarded as one of the best of all time and every live action version has been sorely lacking in Asian actors. Whitewashing something like AKIRA seems like a bad idea. Maybe Warner Bros has thought long and hard about it and decided not to proceed with the project. For now, we can likely assume the remake is headed back into development hell, but stranger things have happened.
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