Almost a month back we had heard about Taika Waititi talking to the direct the Warner Bros. version of Akira which had been in the plans for a long time. While the director of upcoming Thor: Ragnarok doesn’t reveal details about his association with the project, in case he signed on for it, he would be loyal to the source comic by featuring Asian actors.
“Yeah. Actually, Asian teenagers would be the way to do it for me,” he told IGN, “and probably no, not, like no-name, I mean sort of unfound, untapped talent. Yeah, I’d probably want to take it a bit back more towards the books.”
Waititi might not have been signed on for Akira. However, his words will encourage the fans of this path-breaking manga from Katsuhiro Otomo. Hollywood has time and again adapted several manga and anime stories featuring white actors to play characters which were originally Japanese. However, now there is a strong clamor for enhanced involvement of Asian characters and a lot of criticism was aimed at Paramount Pictures’ Ghost in the Shell which featured Scarlett Johansson and also Death Note from Netflix.
Even the upcoming Hellboy reboot faced the accusation of attempted whitewashing when Ed Skrein was cast as Benjamin Daimio, who had a mixed Asian parentage. Addressing the public sentiments, Skrein quickly left the project and the Korean American actor Daniel Dae Kim replaced him.
Akira is a cyberpunk manga which first came out in Young Magazinein 1988. The location is a future mini Tokyo and revolves around a teenage biker gang member called Tetsuo Shima who was later caught in a mystery about his gang leader Shotaro Kaneda and some government experiments which were aimed to take advantage of the human potential for psychic powers. The experiment goes out of control, and Katsuhiro discovers the secrets of the mysterious Akira. Otomo later adapted the manga for a much-appreciated anime film in 1988.
Work on a live-action adaptation of the film was started by Warner Bros. in 2002, and it was based in a reconstructed New Manhattan instead of the Neo Tokyo that featured in the manga as well as the anime. Later the project kept moving from writer to writer and changed several directors too. It came close to production in 2012 when Jaume Collet-Serra came on board, but, progress halted after three years.
No cast was selected then, but, Warner Bros. had started talking to Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Ken Watanabe and Helena Bonham Carter to feature in the film before shelving the project.
