Director Taika Waititi Confirms He's Still Working On Live-action Akira

Director Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok, Boy, Hunt for the Wilderpeople) confirmed in an interview with Dazed posted last Thursday that he is still working on Warner Brothers' live-action Akira film project. Waititi has not confirmed whether or not he is the director on the project.


Waititi also confirmed that he plans to adapt the original manga as opposed to the anime film adaptation. He made a similar comment to IGN in October, saying that the film did not need a remake and "there could be a cool live action adaptation of the books."


Waititi's full comment to Dazed is as follows:

I haven't really started to get my head around it yet. What I wanted to do was an adaptation of the books, 'cos a lot of people are like, 'Don't touch that film!' and I'm like, 'I'm not remaking the film, I want to go back to the book.' A lot of the people freaking out haven't even read the books, and there are six gigantic books to go through. It's so rich. But (the anime) Akira is one of my favourite films; my mum took me to see it when I was 13 and it changed my life.

Deadline previously described the project's story as taking place "in the rebuilt New Manhattan where a leader of a biker gang saves his friend from a medical experiment." Deadline also described the project as spanning two films, with each film tackling three volumes Katsuhiro Otomo's original manga. Mad Chance's Andrew Lazar is producing the film alongside film Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson's Appian Way Productions.




In October 2011, Warner officially green-lit the film for director Jaume Collett-Serra (Unknown, Orphan, House of Wax). However, The Hollywood Reporter then posted that production had shut down in January 2012, before filming would have started. Warner had stalled the project to revise the script so it would be less costly. Collett-Serra said in February 2014 that he was still working on the project, but he then told the Collider website that there was no progress on the project as of March 2015.