Movies
WB Hires ‘Harry Potter’ Writer for ‘Akira’
Steve Kloves, best known for adapting seven of the eight Harry Potter films for Warner Bros., has been recruited to polish the studio’s live-action remake of Japanese manga epic Akira.
Albert Hughes is directing Akira, based on Katsuhiro Otomo’s graphic novel set in a post-apocalyptic Japan. Warner acquired the Akira rights three years ago from publisher Kodansha and set it up with Andrew Lazar’s Mad Chance with Appian Way’s Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson Killoran. Hughes and his brother, Allen Hughes. will also produce.
Warners hasn’t cast or set a release date for Akira, which is set in a metropolis that was rebuilt after being destroyed decades earlier by Akira, a child with immense psychic powers. Otomo wrote and directed the popular 1988 Japanese anime film of the same name, and he’ll exec produce WB’s Akira.
The latest version of the script was penned by Albert Torres, with earlier drafts by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby and Gary Whitta.
If you want to watch a fun movie, watch a Ryuhei Kitamura movie. Whether it’s 2000’s Versus, 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars, 2008’s The Midnight Meat Train or 2022’s underseen The Price We Pay, Kitamura always knows how to deliver a wild and crazy good time.
Up next from Ryuhei Kitamura? Deadline reports that he’ll be directing Thrill Ride, which sounds a bit like the best parts of Final Destination 3… expanded into a feature film!
Deadline details, “the English-language film will tell the story of a group of people, including two young women, who are trapped upside down on a roller coaster taken over by a mysterious saboteur threatening to drop them all one-by-one to their deaths.”
Film Bridge International is launching the project for sales ahead of the Cannes market.
Chad Law and Christopher Jolley wrote the screenplay.
“Thrill Ride is exactly the type of high-concept based thriller that our customers are looking for in the marketplace,” said Film Bridge’s Ellen Wander and Jordan Dykstra. “With Ryuhei at the helm, we know his vision and execution will deliver thrills of the highest quality.”
“As a hardcore rollercoaster fan since I was young, I immediately fell in love with this script filled with suspense, action, crazy ups and downs, turns, loops, and corkscrews at maximum speed,” adds Kitamura. “I can’t wait to get on a ride and bring life to the wildest rollercoaster imaginable.”
We’re already seated. Stay tuned for more on Thrill Ride as we learn it.
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