10 Movies You Won't Believe They Tried To Remake
6. Akira
Akira is quite arguably the single most iconic anime of all time - a relentlessly creative visual feast that's inspired innumerable filmmakers over the last 35 years.
A live-action Hollywood remake has also been in development long enough that it even has its own Wikipedia page.
Sony first acquired the rights to the Akira manga back in the early 1990s, but abandoned plans due to budgetary concerns, prompting Warner Bros. to pick the project up in 2002.
Over the next 20 years, Akira attached five separate directors and 10 writers, all of whom have struggled to crack a live-action take. Involved filmmakers include Stephen Norrington (Blade), Albert Hughes (The Book of Eli), Jaume Collet-Serra (Black Adam), George Miller (Mad Max), and most recently Taika Waititi.
Waititi has been attached to direct for more than five years, but considering how continually busy his schedule is, and how tricky Akira is to adapt, it seems incredibly unlikely it's ever actually going to happen.
Needless to say, a live-action Akira movie would need a huge budget to live up to the anime's mesmerising visuals, and that just doesn't seem tenable in current Hollywood. Let it remain in development hell forever more.