Anime Masterpiece to be Remade as Crappy American Summer flick
thought you’d slip it past me, didn’t you Warner Bros.? You thought I’d be too distracted with the New York Toy Fair to notice your little announcement that you’re fast-tracking a live-action re-make of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira for 2009? Well, too bad, jerkfaces?I saw the Variety article.
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. Otomo will exec produce the films.
Graphic novel was first adapted for the bigscreen in 1988 as a popular animated film which Otomo directed. Studio has closed a seven-figure rights acquisition deal with manga publisher Kodansha and has set Ruairi Robinson to direct a script by Gary Whitta (“Book of Eli”). Andrew Lazar’s Mad Chance will produce with Appian Way’s Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson.
You think I wouldn’t notice the switch from Tokyo to New York? You think I wouldn’t look up who the hell Ruairi Robinson is, and discover he’s only directed commercials and short films before, and has no actual feature movie experience? You think because Leonardo DiCaprio is mentioned in the same paragraph, this means anything?
See, the reason I’m so angry is that there’s already a perfectly good movie made from the Akira manga. It’s called Akira. Grr.
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.