Making one of the most popular Anime films of all time, Akira, which pretty much introduced anmie to the western world, into a live-action movie was always going to be a massive undertaking. The producers knew this, and the Akira live-action adaptation originally had a budget of $200 million and was going to span 2 movies. Then studio Warner Bros. cut to budget to $90 million. Late last year, Warner Bros. wanted to cut the budget even more, by another $20 to $30 million and turn it into a one movie affair.
Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the producers were unable to find the necessary cuts, and as a result, Warner has now shut down the production. It was probably for the best.
Legendary Japanese anime Akira is coming to Blu-ray this month – February 24 to be precise.
The film will make use of the BD-50 dual-layer discs that hold 50GB of data. The video will be a new 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer (1.85:1) and Japanese audio in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround (192 KHz/24 bit), PCM 2.0 Stereo and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround. An English dub in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround will also be on the disc.
On Blu-ray.com is a long article that explains the meticulous process that is being used to restore the 1988 Japanese film for the HD release. While the film was remastered in 2001 for DVD, advancements in technology meant they had to start all over again.
Talking to MTV News, Leonardo diCaprio revealed that he is waiting for the final draft of the live-action remake of classic anime film Akira. He also noted that Ninja Scroll is still in early development stage.
One can easily epect Hollywood to screw up these projects, but diCaprio seems committed not to make them fail.
"I’m a big fan of Japanese anime… I know there a lot of loyal fans out there of the project and die-hard fans, so we’re going to try to do the best job we possibly can and we’re not going to make the movie until the script is in the right shape," he said.
Finally, he added that he has no plans to star in either film though his Appian Way company is producing both projects.
