‘Akira’ Live Action Movie Linked w/ Christopher Nolan?

While the industry of superhero films and young adult adaptation has taken off into franchise heaven, potential live-action films based on Japanese animation have seen over a decade of setbacks when it comes to pre-production (we’ll forget Dragonball, as we should in any regard). Scarlett Johansson is set to lead Ghost in the Shell, but the title on everyone’s lips for as long as I can remember is Akira, the hit animated film that took the world by storm in the 80s and went down in history as essential viewing for anyone getting into the genre.

Beloved by fans across the world, this particular film is a hot-button topic whenever its production process comes into conversation, and fans haven’t been happy when it comes to rumors of renaming and possible casting choices.

Fans of Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga Akira have been waiting several years for this project to arrive on the silver screen, but there has been very little progress since the movie was first put into development way back in 2002. A number of filmmakers have been attached since then, with the latest being Jaume Collet-Serra. But he dropped out of the project back in June. Today we have a new, unconfirmed report from Den Of Geek, which claims that Christopher Nolan could be making Akira his next directorial project, which will be the first in an Akira trilogy.

Just last week, we reported that Warner Bros. has set a July 21, 2017 release date for Christopher Nolan’s next film, although no title or story details were given. The site claims that Akira may be this mystery movie set for the summer of 2017, since the filmmaker reportedly met with an unidentified filmmaker who was formerly attached to direct Akira, over the past three months. The site also speculates that it’s possible Christopher Nolan could only be coming aboard to produce, like he did with 2013’s Man of Steel.

The original manga is set in Neo-Tokyo, centering on two members in a biker gang, Kaneda and Tetsuo, who become bitter rivals when one develops amazing telekinetic powers. The manga was originally a six-volume comic, so a movie trilogy would certainly make it easier to put as much of this beloved story on the big screen as possible.

The report on Christopher Nolan’s 2017 mystery movie didn’t indicate whether he was writing the script himself, which could be a sign that this mystery project is in fact Akira. While Marco Ramirez is working on the current script draft, if this does turn out to be Christopher Nolan’s project, the writer-director would certainly take a crack at the script himself. What do you think about Christopher Nolan taking on Akira?