Im not too upset. Even with Black Swan every time I see Mila Kunis the first thing i think is "Shut up Meg!"

Does anyone have any idea if this will just be a remake of the anime, or an adaptation of the manga?

Oh, this is cool and all. But there making a sequal to The fucking Wizard of Oz? What?

I hate to be negative, (actually thats a lie) but it dosen't matter who is in this or what the budget is, it aint going to work. Simples! :)

@capncrunch I heard it was going to use the story as the skeleton, then use New York as the setting.

I'm share the opinion of Trip2K

Damn. Edit button when japanator?

IDGAF about Pitt but I really like Mila Kunis. Sad to see she won't be involved anymore.

Eh, for a moment when I read Brad Pitt I forgot who this person was, and I got excited thinking Brad Rice was offered some movie job, but then turned it down wtf. :P

But yeah, who was Brad Pitt again?

Huh? Akira Live action? I don't know about that, but that header image is awesome :D

Honestly, this could work. All other Anime that they have tried to turn live action (Speed racer, DragonBall, ect.) have been fantasy/soft sci-fi and shonen. Akira is hard sf with some mysticism thrown in. If a movie like Avatar can be made, so can this, as long as the right director, writer, staff ect. come on. And really, it has to tae place in America, otherwise hollywood would have to hire all Japanese actors, film it in Japan, and have them speak Japanese, or worse yet, english. Even if the leads were all American and it took place in Tokyo, it would still not work. The best thing they can do is go more the route Zack Snyder went with Watchmen. a sort of dark, moody feel, with special effects used less often than say speed racer, and lighting filters and such that give it a "Akira" feel. Hell, they could keep Akira (the character) Japanese and say something like "The US government brought him th New York after the disaster in Neo Tokyo", since the US military was already a major presence in the Manga. Films based on Manga/Anime can work, Just look at the Korean film OldBoy, considered by Imbd and the International film association as the best Korean film ever. It was based on a Manga as well. Hollywood just needs to ease it's audience into this kind of thing, as the story structure for anime is very different than Hollywood films. If things like The Matrix and Lord of The Rings cn be pullled of and meet critical aclaim, than so can Akira.

Personally... I just don't know if Hollywood has is it anymore... I haven't seen a Hollywood move in over five years now that came close to making me go wow.

@Mudfuzz I know what you mean, there have been a few (No Country for Old Men is one of my all time faves) that I have liked, but mainly it is recycled stuff. That is the main reason I like Anime, it isn't just LOLCGI or LOLROMANTIC COMEDY. Hollywood has just started to cater too much to the lowest common denominator to make a greater profit. I enjoyed CGI orgies like Tron and Avatar, but I simply enjoyed them, after they were over I didn't think "wow, that movie changed how I think about x" like 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Godfather did. This is why I think drawing from foreign media could be good for Hollywood. although as good as Akira is, it does not have as much intellectual depth as, say, Grave of The Fireflies, an anime released in 1988 as well, but it still has more substance, not to mention visual attributes, than most big budget sci-fi/action films now a days. I would personally love it if Hollywood returned to the Stanley Kubrick or Alfred Hitchock type story telling again, as opposed to the Micheal Bay or Jude Rudd type. I think it would just be awesome to have a movie made with Avatar quality CGI and Citezen Cane quality story. This would be the absolute pinicall of visual media. Instead, most movies have Avatar quality story, and are over CGI-ed or are just plain shallow. But I think the problem isn't really Hollywood, but the audience. For example, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron have both made awesome movies in the past (Think Shindlers List, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Titanic, Alien), but as of late have not produced anything with adequite substance. This is because people now, as cliche as it sounds, want instant gratification and dismiss deep story as "boring". And this can be seen in the Anime industry with Moe/fanservice/shonen stuff, but quality stuff is still more commonly produced because that industry functions more as a collection of independent parts, like a republic, while Hollywood is more of a Monarchy, whose Queen is CGI and King is money.

//rant

Hmph, did you watch Serenity, the movie based on Firefly? That was epic.

I guess it wasn't too deep, but man it was good. I named my computer after that movie.

I don't have high hopes for this, but I'm sure it will be better than another Wizard of Oz movie. They already tried that once (Return to Oz) and it was horrible...

And not a single F*CK as given today.
Neither of them should be in the movie. Hell this movie shouldn't even be made.

I could see the americans having a REALLY tough time with this movie. In that little-less-than-10-minutes-scene....the only thing I really see in Akira is great art. The story takes it's sweet time and the characters hardly say or do anything to make you want to even watch the entire thing. It's art is fantastic, but so is Spirited Away. :\

"it does not have as much intellectual depth as, say, Grave of The Fireflies"
It's been a while since I've seen Akira, but wasn't GotF just a dumb kid starving himself and his little sister?

Last time I heard how Hollywood Akira was going to play out was that it was going to base it off chapters. I read that they wanted the first film to tell about a third of the story. Then again, that was a good three years ago since I read that plan, so... who knows?

@Bohan Liebert
I am indeed hopeful about the Akira live-action... or was until you mentioned Dragon-ball and Speed Racer.

The real question is if they did do a live action akira, Would it just be an adaptation of the movie, or the whole thing (i.e. the manga)? I would really like to see the latter done.

I believe that a lot of people are forgetting a couple of things regarding some of the most recent anime adaptations. Speed Racer was a fanboy movie pretty much made to entertain the musings of the Wachowski brothers, and as such was designed only to appeals to a very select few. Dragonball was essentially made with no audience in mind at all which is why it was so terrible.

I feel that the current adaptations in the works such as Cowboy Bebop, Akira, and Ghost in a Shell are going to be some of the most important films concerning anime/manga material to come out of Hollywood. If handled correctly I could easily foresee a whole new world of stories and adventures brought to the general American populace and flooding Hollywood.

I recently stumbled across an interview on Anime News Network from Oct 2010 with Joshua Long of 1212 Entertainment. I personally found the interview to be very reassuring of the direction that his company is taking in the production of the live action Cowboy Bebop and a few other series that they have movie/television rights too. I would highly recommend listening to it in hopes that it allows you to form a better opinion on the topic, regardless of what that might be. http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/anncast/2010-10-15

I apologize for being long winded, but at the end of the day I would like everybody to be able to enjoy and take part in the stories we have loved for years. And it is for that reason I sincerely wish for the success of these adaptations. We all know that there is boat load of source material just waiting in Japan to be unleashed, so lets hope these guys take their time and do it right!

@matty

"It's been a while since I've seen Akira, but wasn't GotF just a dumb kid starving himself and his little sister? "

If you're serious, this is one of the most ridiculous things I've heard in my life.