With 2011 seeing a drop in both cinema revenues and attendance, studios are looking extra hard at what they spend their money on. While getting the greenlight normally means everything is going full steam ahead, in recent months even those movies nearing production have been reviewed, with some, such as The Lone Ranger, being shut down while the budget was tightened (that movie has since restarted and will shoot imminently).
Now it’s happened to another movie – the live-action version of Akira. The film’s already gone from being the originally planned two films costing over $100 million each to a single movie costing $90 million, but now Warner wants it to cost even less.
The studio has halted pre-production on Akira, shutting down the Vancouver offices, according to THR. Although the film has gone through an extensive series of rewrites, its believed that a new writer will be brought on to completely overhaul the screeplay. Akira isn’t dead though. Warner Bros. is insistent that Akira become a live action film, no matter how badly fans of the original don’t want it.
Whether the delay will affect the casting isn’t known. Garrett Hedlund is currently signed in the lead as Kaneda, with the studio eyeing both Michael Pitt and Dane DeHaan to play his best friend Tetsuo. Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown) is still set to direct this adaptation. While the movie will move forward at some point in the near future, there is no telling when the pre-production offices will re-open for business.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
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