Leonardo DiCaprio keen on producing live action version of anime film ‘Akira’
Director Zack Snyder has also cited the film as one of his favourites
Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio is now open to making a film based on the Japanese anime film ‘Akira’, which has been a monumental influence on many directors, particularly Zack Snyder, who has frequently called it one of his favourite films.
The former DCEU director had been wanting to direct an ‘Akira’ live action based movie or series for some time, but currently the project is in "development hell", or rotting in the black void of many scrapped projects.
Hollywood has never been good at doing anime adaptations, and has largely tried to stay away from anime ever since ‘Dragonball Evolution’, which was slammed by everyone.
However, since the live action adaptation of the popular anime ‘One Piece’ came out and has become rather successful, Hollywood has been open to doing live action adaptations of popular anime serials, with a live action version of ‘One Punch Man’ already in the works.
According to Collider, following that success and the Hollywood megastar’s own interest in the movie, DiCaprio has been more than open to producing a live action version of ‘Akira’ for streaming platforms.
Back in 2013, when Snyder made his entrance in the DC universe with ‘The Man of Steel’, he had greatly spoken of the influence ‘Akira’ has had on him, as Snyder is a renowned fan of comic books.
He had said: “I am still being influenced by ‘Akira’. This has been true since long ago and I am still receiving it now. I think that the scene where the internal organs of the character gets chipped out is amazing and I am trying to manoeuvre in my work many times”.
“To ‘Akira’ and ‘Man of the Steel’, from a scene where several characters are talking intimately, it spreads to a large scene where a town is suddenly destroyed, and it seems like it will be shown in parallel," Snyder said. "There are places where similarities are similar, such as places, and there are many parts that are being influenced.”
DiCaprio has also cited ‘Akira’ as a big influence, and had begun production for an ‘Akira’ film back in 2019, though the project got scrapped eventually as Taika Waititi, who was the film’s director at the time, left the project.
Based on the 1982 manga of the same name by Katsuhiro Otomo, the ‘Akira’ film when it hit theatres in 1988 received rave reviews and is considered an all time classic, having earned itself a massive 92 per cent positive score.
The story revolves around a cyberpunk biker gang in the midst of a conspiracy. Set in a dystopian future, the plot dives into a bunch of psychics in a city called ‘Neo-Tokyo’. The story dives into issues of isolation, corruption, tyranny, technology and more.