Taika Waititi says his Akira would adapt the manga rather than the anime

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Last month it was reported that Taika Waititi (THOR: RAGNAROK) was in negotiations with Warner Bros. about tackling a live-action adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira". Taika Waititi's involvment is far from a sure thing, but the director did speak to IGN recently where he confirmed that there have been talks, but wouldn't specify whether or not he'd take the project on. However, Waititi did comment on how he would approach the film, which doesn't involve remaking the AKIRA anime, but rather going straight to the original manga source.

I actually love the books. Love the movie, but I would not do a remake of the movie. I would do an adaptation of the books.

Hollywood has been receiving quite a lot of backlash for whitewashing, most recently in Rupert Sanders' GHOST IN THE SHELL and Adam Wingard's DEATH NOTE, and fans have long feared that AKIRA would suffer a similar fate, but, if Taika Waititi does wind up in the director's chair, he says that he would cast Asian leads, and that preferably, they would be unknown actors.

Yeah. actually Asian teenagers would be the way to do it for me and probably no, not, like no name, I mean sort of unfound, untapped talent. Yeah, I'd probably want to take it a bit back more towards the books.

Although AKIRA is considered to be one of the most influential anime films of all-time, it was forced to condense the plot of the manga quite drastically, in fact, Katsuhiro Otomo, who also directed the anime, didn't complete the manga until two years after the film was released. Warner Bros.' take on AKIRA, which has been in development for years, will apparently take place in a rebuilt New Manhattan where a leader of a biker gang saves his friend from a medical experiment. The plan is to split the story into two films, each covering three books in the manga series.

Taika Waititi's next film, THOR: RAGNAROK, is set to hit theaters on November 3, 2017.