George Miller, director for the Mad Max films has turned down an offer to work on the supposed live action Akira movie. Looks like the project is in for an even bumpier ride.
Miller said in an interview with Yahoo! Movies that, “There was talk of it, but I’ve got so many things on my dance card, I don’t have the time to do everything.”
There were also rumours that Akira had a direct influence on Mad Max: Fury Road, but he vehemently denies it.
“I don’t know where that came from. I’m a huge fan of anime and the precision of that and to some degree Manga, even though I don’t read Japanese, but just the aesthetic of it. So Akira might have been one of the many movies but it certainly wasn’t one that directly influenced Mad Max.”
Marco Ramirez (Daredevil, Sons of Anarchy) is currently preparing a screenplay for said Akira project, with Andrew Lazar (American Sniper) and Appian Way as the producers and Drew Crevello and Nik Mavinkurve overseeing the project.
While the manga and the animated film is set in Neo-Tokyo, the live action project will be set in “New Manhattan” a city rebuilt after being destroyed 31 years ago.
The project hasn’t had a easy run, being originally announced in 2008 and Warner greenlighting the film in 2011. Then there was news that production ended in January 2012, but there are rumours that Christopher Nolan could be starring in said movie, among other recent developments.
It is pretty uncertain where the project could go from here, but we hope that it never dies out.
