The concept behind Akira doesn’t feel as fresh as it once did and that’s why I was so goddamn excited to have Taika Waititi steering the wheel. The filmmaker behind What We Do in the Shadows, Thor: Ragnarok, and the forthcoming Acadamy Award candidate JoJo Rabbit, has a fresh perspective that beautifully meshes with his visually stunning storytelling. If anyone were to breathe new life into Akira it would be Waititi.
It was soul-crushing to report that Warner Bros. had (once again) pulled the plug on Akira due to a scheduling conflict with Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder. It was implied that he could return after Thor, but that seemed highly unlikely, not to mention an obvious pr move by the studio.
It’s been three months now and Waititi isn’t wavering from this position, telling IGN that he still plans to circle back to Akira once he completed his commitment to Marvel’s Thor.
“Unfortunately, the timing with Akira, because we’ve been working really hard on the script, we had to keep pushing the start date for the shoot,” Waititi said. “We ended up having to push it a couple weeks too far, which actually ate into the Thor schedule, because they were very close together. And that got pushed again and again, and it just got too far into the Thor schedule to be able to make it work. And my first commitment was to Marvel to make that film, so now I’ve kind of had to take Akira and sort of shift it around to the tail-end of Thor and move it down a couple of years.”
I’m not wanting to see Akira rushed and if this is what it takes to get it done correctly, I’ll wait. Waititi is an exciting filmmaker and Warner Bros. is doing the right thing to wait on him, assuming his commitment is authentic. For now, at least we have the original animated adaptation as well as Fox’s Chronicle.
In Akira, a secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.
