Since the last time we posted a summary of Warner’s Akira adaptation, director Jaume Collet-Serra returned to the director’s chair, then bailed again. Then Warner hired Sons of Anarchy writer and Daredevil co-showrunner Marco J. Ramirez to rewrite the script. Presumably, Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart are no longer attached to play Kaneda and Kei, because sheesh.
Now Den of Geek offers one hell of an update:
We’ve now heard from a source close to Warner Bros. that the studio is planning to make a trilogy of films based on Akira — all the better to do justice to Otomo’s sprawling dystopian sci-fi yarn, perhaps.
Most intriguingly of all, we’re told that Christopher Nolan has met with a previously attached filmmaker (who we can’t name here) within the past three months to talk about the project.
Coincidentally (not coincidentally?), Nolan has a secret project brewing with Warner that already has a release date of July 21, 2017, which is one week after the next Planet of the Apes and one week before Marvel’s Spider-Man. In other words, it’s probably something big to be pitted against those films. Could it be Akira? What do I look like, some kind of esper with psychic powers?
We’re not sure if Nolan will direct or if he’ll only produce. If he’s speaking with previously attached filmmakers to get one of them to direct, we can whittle this down to a few names. Den of Geek already ruled out Jaume Collet-Serra, and saying “filmmaker” (singular) likely rules out the Hughes Brothers. The best guess likely comes from The Playlist, who thinks it’s Ruairi Robinson (“The Leviathan”). Leave it to a guy who made a short film about hunting space whales to helm a movie that’s turning into Warner’s white whale.
(Via Den of Geek and The Playlist)