A few days ago the Internet breathed a collective sigh of relief when Warner Bros. finally shut down the Vancouver production offices of the western, live-action, filled exclusively with white people, remake of Akira, but unfortunately sometimes there’s nothing more resilient than a sh-tty idea.
Shutting down a production office is a pretty normal thing and doesn’t by any means indicate a project is dead. In fact this is the fourth time it’s happened to Akira. According to inside sources Warner Bros. just wants to further tinker with the script before taking a run at this thing again.
So no, Akira isn’t dead, but at least they’re improving the script! That’s a good thing, right? Uhhh, welll…the writers Warner Bros. are eyeing to punch up the script are Jonah Nolan and Michael Green. Jonah is Christopher Nolan’s little brother, who hasn’t really done anything outside of getting partial story credit on some of his brother’s movies. Michael Green is a straight-up hack who’s written for Smallville and Heroes and was partially responsible for the script for Green Lantern.
I don’t know why there’s so much concern over the script. There’s already an Akira movie! Just take the script from the anime, add some references to Twitter and 4Chan memes to freshen it up for the kids, cast Shia LeBeouf as Kaneda and bing, bang, boom, you’re done.
via Deadline NY & The Playlist