Warner Bros. Gives Up on ‘Akira’ Remake, But Hollywood Won’t

Well, it’s happened. After 20 years of shuffling creative teams and development hell, Warner Bros. finally called it and won’t remake Akira.

But things aren’t ending there, according to the Hollywood Reporter. WB’s simply let go of the movie rights it acquired back in 2002. They’ve now returned to the manga’s publisher, Kodansha; according to THR, several producers and talents are already “lining up” for the chance to adapt it. No specific people were listed, ditto studios or streamers, but you can imagine all the big ones want it.

WB’s been threatening to do an Akira remake directed or written by either Stephen Norrington, Garry Whitta, Jaume Collet-Serra, or others. One of the more recent names thrown out there was Taika Waititi to direct and co-write in 2017, and it was even meant to release in May 2021. But after Waititi was locked in for Thor: Love & Thunder and other projects, the remake got pulled from the release schedule. Since then, there’s been no word on it.

Like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Saw before it, Akira now has a chance at a real future on the big screen. The question now is, who’ll be the one to bring it to the masses, and how will that film change the source for a new audience that probably only knows it because of the endlessly replicated slide?

While waiting to see how that shakes out, there’s the in-development Akira anime series from Gundam studio Sunrise, assuming that ever leaves development hell.

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