There’s a pretty informative look at the upcoming (yeah right) Live Action AKIRA, which is apparently on the ‘fast track’ to get made. Here’s a excerpt of the article:
Exclusive: A look at the live action AKIRA remake – AKIRA PART 1!
“Each feature will be based on three of the books in Otomo’s series. The story takes place in New Manhattan, a metropolis that was rebuilt after being destroyed 31 years earlier.”
The story takes place in a burgeoning new metropolis of the future, several years after a cataclysmic event destroyed the old city that once stood in its place. Unbeknownst to most of the populace, the real cause of the event was a small boy with incredible psychic powers, part of a top secret government program attempting to harness such so called “Espers” as weapons. The project is deemed too dangerous, and the young boy – AKIRA – is put in cryogenic stasis in a secret underground facility to prevent such a disaster from ever occurring again.
In probably the most significant change and the only one that really bugged me, the events of this version are shifted from Tokyo to New York – but after the city is destroyed and the United States’ economy collapses, burgeoning superpower Japan buys the devastated island to construct a new city to house their ever expanding population…Continue reading at LatinoReview.com
What are the chances that this will actually get made? And will it be good?
I wanted to post a quick follow-up quote from the article that actually made me think there’s a chance this could work:
“The people out there who demand faithfulness in adaptations and remakes should be pleasantly surprised, even if not outright delighted by this script; sure, a few elements are slightly watered-down, Hollywood-ized, Americanized – but there is no outright wrecking, ruining, or childhood raping going on here. All things considered it is shockingly faithful to the source material, at times reading like a flat-out transcript/description of the animated movie, and even incorporating aspects of the original manga that were left out of the anime version. It is faithful not only in plot and character details, but in tone. It retains the darkness, the violence, the epic qualities and even some of the themes, though they’ve been tweaked, Americanized, and updated to apply to current events.”
One hilariously change from the original, which was totally expected is that ‘Tetsuo’ has been renamed ‘Travis’ in the script, lol.