The Untold Truth Of Leo DiCaprio's Akira

He's one of the world's most respected actors, but even Leonardo DiCaprio isn't completely immune to criticism, and the Oscar winner will be well aware that he's sticking his neck out by getting involved with Akira. Warner Bros. and DiCaprio's company Appian Way are officially moving forward with a live-action remake of the classic Japanese manga and anime, and while it appears as though the Inception star won't actually star in the movie, he's still putting his stellar reputation on the line by producing it. Why is this such a risky venture? That's a multifaceted question, one that we're going to tackle momentarily. But the short answer is: many have tried, and many have failed.

A Hollywood remake of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira has been on the cards for almost two decades, though every time it gets a greenlight, the wheels somehow fall off. So why would DiCaprio's most recent incarnation be any different? Paramount had its fingers burned when it gave Ghost in the Shell (another beloved manga-turned-anime) the Tinseltown treatment in 2017, but have lessons been learned? Alita: Battle Angel certainly fared better, even if critical response was still mixed. If we're lucky, maybe Akira will truly be the Hollywood anime adaptation we've all been waiting for, but there's every chance it'll end up another high-profile failure.

From the most recent developments to the project's error-plagued history, this is the full, untold truth of Leo DiCaprio's Akira.

DiCaprio's Akira fell through in 2008, but it had nothing to do with Whitta's script not being ready. Irish director Ruairi Robinson (who created a bonkers sizzle reel to showcase his vision for the remake) was attached at the time. He later revealed that producers put the project on the back-burner for financial reasons. "They couldn't get the budget under 200 million bucks for that draft, which was a bit rich for what was proposed as an R-rated movie with no stars," Robinson said.

For those of you unfamiliar with the plot of Akira, it takes places three decades after Tokyo is leveled by a devastating explosion. The mega city that springs up in the aftermath is Neo-Tokyo, home to the young biker gang that the story revolves around. When one of the boys begins to develop powerful psychokinetic abilities, Neo-Tokyo faces destruction all over again. It's a big-budget story, which is probably why DiCaprio and his partners at Warner Bros. decided to film the whole movie in California.

Making Akira totally in-state means the film qualifies for an $18.5 million tax credit allocation, Deadline confirmed. "The availability of top-notch crew members, plus the wide variety of location choices and predictable weather are second to none," Warner Bros.' Ravi Mehta said. Needless to say, fans of the original are worried about this move. The setting and aesthetic of Akira are central to its appeal, and recreating this in the Golden State will be no mean feat.

During his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Taika Waititi reminded readers that Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo has advised anyone who directs a live-action version to put their own unique spin on it. "Otomo said, 'Please don't copy my stuff, don't copy what I did.'" Luckily, that was never Waititi's plan. The Hunt for the Wilderpeople director always intended to go back to the manga and create a movie unlike the 1988 anime, but he still has to go through Otomo. When the Japanese artist-turned-director sat down with Forbes in 2017, he revealed that while he's happy for a new filmmaker to take Akira in a different direction, he gets final approval. 

"When it comes to Akira I have already finished the original manga and my own anime version too," Otomo said. "So in that sense, I am basically done with Akira. If someone wants to do something new with Akira then I am mostly okay with that. As I accepted the offer for a live-action Akira to be made, so I am generally okay with whatever they want to do with it. However, I did give one major condition to a live-action version and that is that I had to check and approve the scenario. As always, the fundamental question on adapting anything is whether you follow the host work strictly or do something new with it."

This idea of setting the Hollywood version of Akira in a future Manhattan actually dates back to when Warner Bros. first negotiated a deal for the property in 2002. Stephen Norrington (Blade) was the first person in the hot seat, signing on to both write and direct. The filmmaker rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way when he spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about his vision for the movie, confirming that he intended to make it "more accessible" to Western audiences. Norrington told THR (via IGN) that his story "preserves the tone, the visual and the epic scope of the original whilst telling a somewhat more accessible story."

Norrington didn't explicitly state that his version would feature Western actors and be set in America, but his replacement later confirmed that some version of Neo-Manhattan has been on the cards from the very beginning. When Norrington departed the project (which, probably not coincidentally, happened after his film The League of Extraordinary Gentleman flopped) the studio turned to director Ruairi Robinson and screenwriter Gary Whitta. Speaking with Collider in 2013, Whitta revealed that Norrington did in fact intend to move the action to "New-Manhattan" and abandon the Neo-Tokyo setting altogether.

One of the many Hollywood stars attached to the Akira remake over the years, Keanu Reeves came very close to playing Kaneda. When the Ruairi Robinson/Gary Whitta version fell through, Warner Bros. (under the "watchful eye" of DiCaprio) hired Book of Eli co-director Albert Hughes to steady the ship and brought in Harry Potter scribe Steve Kloves to rework the script. Reeves was the main target, but despite constructive talks, the Matrix star decided to pass. As it turns out, he wasn't the first.

"The discussions were early but optimistic as Reeves seemed to have interest in the material, but we can confirm that Reeves has officially joined Brad Pitt, James Franco and Ryan Gosling as actors who've passed on starring in Akira," JoBlo revealed. "Some time after receiving word from Reeves' reps that he would be passing on the project, Warner Bros. shut down Akira's pre-viz department and most of the staff that was working on the film was let go." 

The studio denied that Reeves' rejection had anything to do with the shutdown, but from the outside it certainly seemed like the straw that broke the camel's back. According to Deadline, WB had already approached Robert Pattinson, Andrew Garfield and James McAvoy about the role of Tetsuo, while Garrett Hedlund, Michael Fassbender, Chris Pine, Joaquin Phoenix, and even Justin Timberlake were contenders for Kaneda.

Next through the revolving door was director Jaume Collet-Serra, who replaced the outgoing Albert Hughes. Collet-Serra came aboard in 2011, but it wasn't long before his reincarnated version of the project hit a brick wall. In January 2012, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the production offices in Vancouver had been shut down. At this stage, the only actor officially involved was Garrett Hedlund (though Kristen Stewart, Ken Watanabe, and Helena Bonham Carter were said to have been "in various stages of dealmaking"), so when budget once again became an issue, the studio didn't hesitate to put Akira back on the shelf.

Collet-Serra was already working with a reduced budget of $90 million, and sources suggested that Warner Bros. wanted to drop that figure again, aiming to spend as little as $60 million. It all went quiet on the Akira front after that, but when the director spoke with Coming Soon in 2014, he confirmed that he was still trying to get a scaled-down version made. Unfortunately, he also made some incredibly ill-advised comments about Otomo's story.

"Nobody's interesting," the Spanish filmmaker said. "Tetsuo's interesting because weird s*** happens to him, and Kaneda is so two-dimensional. That's part of the Japanese culture, they never have strong characters. They're used as a way to move the other philosophy forward." These comments were quickly picked up by Comics Alliance, who couldn't understand why exactly Collet-Serra would dedicate years of his life to "a cultural literature he does not respect."

Does Akira actually work in any other setting? Speaking to SlashFilm in 2018, screenwriter Gary Whitta argued that the themes are universal and therefore the setting should be interchangeable. "I personally reject the argument that Akira is necessarily a Japanese story and that it's somehow sacrilegious to set a new adaptation of it anywhere else," Whitta said. "I think many of the themes in that story are ones that speak to the human condition and are therefore relevant anywhere in the world — if that weren't true the original versions would never have been a hit outside of Japan."

A similarly themed story could indeed work anywhere, but the trouble with Akira is that it's directly inspired by the post-World War II mentality in Japan, and at its heart is about how living in the aftermath of a nuclear event can change a country. This is reflected in the "shocking nihilism of its young protagonists," as Comics Alliance put it. Hiro Murai told IndieWire that Akira is "tied to post-war Japan and ideology," and he isn't the only director to voice this opinion. According to Vice, both Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas were "offered the chance to bring Akira to the U.S. in 1987 [and] they famously turned it down, saying it wouldn't suit western audiences."