Warner Bros. Lets AKIRA Live-Action Rights Lapse

Akira was a landmark anime film in 1988. Otomo wrote and directed the movie based on the first several chapters of his massive (and actually quite different) manga epic. Famously, it was the most expensive animated film Japan ever produced, with one cell of animation for every frame in the movie. That’s 24 frames per second, ya know. As such, it’s one of the smoothest and most expressive animated films of all time. Not to mention, its cyberpunk-meets-splatterpunk Neo-Tokyo has become the hallmark of futuristic hellhole cities. The aesthetic is everywhere. It’s a movie a think everyone should watch once a year for religious purposes.

That’s also a lot of baggage to bring to a live-action adaptation, especially from an American studio. The infamous Ghost in the Shell movie, based on the other pillar of cyberpunk anime, tanked at the box office and faced major backlash because of whitewashing the lead so Scarlett Johansson could play her. It was an expensive movie that flopped like Luguentz Dort in game seven of the NBA Finals. With such fresh stank still on an American anime adaptation, especially one so similar, no wonder WB felt like they could just let it go.

But Akira is still name people know and that makes it attractive to other studios. Deadline says the property has a bidding war from studios wanting to try their hand. It doesn’t say which studios or how much they’re bidding. If Akira does ever become a big-screen, live-action movie, we certainly hope they manage not to pi-- off the fan base. Or maybe just leave well enough alone.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.