A huge story at Variety reports that Warner Bros. Pictures’ long-awaited adaptation of Akira has just received an $18.5 million tax credit from the California Film Commission.
Akira, based on a manga series written and illustrated by Katsuhiro Otama and set in a post-apocalyptic 2060 Tokyo, will generate an estimated $92 million in qualified spending. This figure includes $43 million in wages to 200 below-the-line crew members and more than 5,000 extras/stand-ins. The project is scheduled to film entirely in California over the course of 71 filming days.
Leonardo DiCaprio is producing the domestic take on the Japanese source material that will move the story to a rebuilt New Manhattan where a leader of a biker gang saves his friend from a medical experiment. The last we heard was two years ago when What We Do in the Shadows and Thor: Ragnarok‘s Taika Waititi was announced to direct. It’s unclear if he’s still attached.
The intention has always been to make 2 films, each covering 3 books in the series. Akira was first adapted for the screen in 1988.
A previous article on Deadline explained that the tumultuous history with the picture getting close to rolling several times. Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Book of Eli scribe Gary Whitta wrote a script which originally had Ruairi Robinson aboard to direct. The Hughes Brothers and Jaume Collet-Serra were among the filmmakers who sparked to it. It got closest to a start date several years ago, until it closed the Vancouver production office, the studio let lapse test options deals it had with Dane DeHaan and Michael Pitt, who had been competing for the lead role of Tetsuo, and were going to star alongside Garrett Hedlund, Kristin Stewart, and potentially Ken Watanabe and Helena Bonham Carter.
