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]