Another month, another bit of strange and not altogether unsurprising movement with the Akira movie project from Warner Bros. with it. This time we have via Variety the news that the studio has tapped Jaume Collet-Serra to handle the directing duties after the Hughes Brothers stepped away from the project and after a number of high profile names were floated for the lead roles that set off a new round of race related casting issues for the production. According to the piece, the feature is in the process of being “reenvisioned” a bit to a $90 million tentpole, but it’s unclear what it’s status will be since it was originally talked about as a two feature project. The most recent draft for the script was done by Steve Kloves, whom Warner Bros. has a lot of appreciation for with the work he’s done with the Harry Potter scripts. Like most productions, it’s had numerous writers and changes made during its progress towards actually going into production, so there are no surprises here.
Collet-Serra, who was recently thought to be the lead pick for the new Xerxes film, has been gaining a following at Warner for a few reasons; one is that his features have consistently been grossing more with each new one he works on since his start in 2005, culminating in the 2011 release of Unknown which brought in $130 million on a $30 million budget, and the second being his track record for being on time and on budget with what he’s done so far. He’s quickly becoming a talent that Warner Bros. is looking to use more and more of with higher profile pictures.
