Part of an interesting crowdfunding project that began back in 2012 from Indiegogo, the results of the Akira live action trailer has been released. The five minute piece (including credits) provides a look at how the movie could be adapted into live action form. It uses a lot of the key scenes from the anime film and reworks others that you’d expect would have to be in order to achieve something in this particular medium. With a good bit of post-produciton work in it, the end result is something that certainly encourages you to believe that such a project could conceivably work.
But it also reminds us that Warner Bros. still isn’t able to get this project moving with the millions it would take (compared to the $7,500 that was being used to fund this project) and that when they do, it’ll likely be heavily localized which will result in a lot of fans of the original work not rallying behind it but rather calling it out for all the inherent and structural issues that come from such an adaptation.
So, huge kudos for The Akira Project for likely giving us the closest we’ll get to a proper vision of a live action adaptation of Akira.
Project concept: The Akira Project is a crowd-sourced, non-profit project meant to create a live action fan trailer of AKIRA, the renowned manga-turned-anime film from the late 1980′s; a stunning example of both mediums as art forms. While Hollywood has been working on a live-action Akira movie for a few years now, we, as fans, wanted to take a shot at making our own adaptation. A chance to stick as close to the source material as possible. A chance to do Akira Justice.
We launched an Indiegogo campaign in July 2012 as part of a crowd sourcing effort to make this project come to life. Many people contributed not just financially but offered their time and talent to help the production that was shot in Montreal, Quebec from November 2-5th 2012. What started out as a simple idea between two guys having a beer (Hey! It’d be cool to see Kaneda ride his bike around Neo-Tokyo!), became a global endeavour, filled with adventures and hurdles, involving more than 40 artists in 12 different countries.
After a year and a half in post-production, we are proud to present the project to Akira fans the world over. We hope to have done justice to the timeless work of Katsuhiro Otomo and look forward to, someday, seeing the full scope of the Akira story translated to the big screen as a live-action.
