After not hearing about it for quite some time, we’re finally getting news on the live action Hollywood adaptation of Akira. No longer is it under the production of Appian Way, DiCaprio’s production company, but under the watchful eye of Warner Bros. The old preliminary script has also been scrapped and a new one is in the works by Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus, better known for their work on the immensely thrilling and tense Children of Men.

At least now it feels like the franchise is under more expert hands. Maybe it wont be turned into a half-assed teenage angst flick with a Linkin Park soundtrack, which months ago we explained in the above picture. Children of Men had a fantastic script, mature and sensible, we can only hope some of that makes it through here. If said script ends up getting the green light we’d see the film produced next year and hitting the big screen as early as 2011. I’m confident by 2011 our CGI technology will be capable of photorealistic giant mutant babies, otherwise why bother?

Holy awful franchise choices, batman! Hollywood reporter is… well reporting, on Warner Bros. and Appian Way’s (Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company) plans to take the anime and manga epic Akira to the silver screen.

Does it hurt yet? Well let me put some salt on that wound, they plan two make 2 movies out of the franchise. Ruairi Robinson is directing the film and no he hasn’t directed anything you probably saw. The adaptation is being written by Gary Whitta and he has already made such adapting decisions like renaming Neo Tokyo for New Manhattan, a city destroyed 20 years ago and rebuilt by Japanese money. New Manhattan, while you let that one sink in let me tell you the tentative release season is summer 2009 for the first movie.

You know, when you think about it, its the perfect time for a project like this, Tetsuo is angsty, filled with issues, heartbroken and mad with power, the only way the emo crowd wont jump on this is if they finally got the courage to off themselves. But anyway, with the Dragon Ball movie well underway I’m not feeling particularly bad about this one, the lesser of two evils I guess. I’m just wondering if we’ll get a giant CGI manbaby or not.

[Hollywood Reporter]