Neo-Tokyo is coming to life, and movie studio Warner Bros. might be enlisting Jordan Peele to make that happen. A new rumor circling the floor at CinemaCon in Las Vegas indicates that the director of the recent horror hit Get Out may be tapped to helm the long-in-development, live-action adaptation of the 1988 anime classic Akira.
Peele is only the latest in a long line of rumored directors and producers for Akira, which has been a white whale of a project for Warner Bros. for years. On Wednesday, The Tracking Board reported that the studio is “moving aggressively” to get Peele, whose critically acclaimed movie Get Out grossed $154.4 million against its low budget of just $4.5 million earlier this year, making Peele a hot candidate for the Hollywood remake of Katsuhiro Otomo’s iconic anime. Both Get Out and Akira make use of science-fiction and horror while exploring entirely different spectrums of social unrest.
The list of creative talents associated with a Hollywood remake of Akira is long and exhaustive. The last rumored director to helm Akira was Justin Lin, who has been predominantly involved with the Fast & Furious franchise before jumping onto last summer’s Star Trek Beyond. Before that, The Dark Knight and Interstellar director Christopher Nolan was hovering to produce an entire Akira trilogy. And before that, Jaume Collet-Serra (Run All Night) was to direct Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart in the lead roles until the whole thing was nixed. In the late 2000s, Leonardo DiCaprio was in talks to produce Akira, one of the first big names connected with the remake.
The original Akira from 1988 is widely considered one of the greatest anime movies of all time. Along with other films of its time, such as Ghost in the Shell and pretty much anything from Hayao Miyazaki, it ushered in anime’s journey to the west, sparking a passionate fandom that thrives to this day. Akira has been cited as a huge influence on films like The Matrix, Chronicle, and Netflix’s Stranger Things.
As of yet, Jordan Peele and Warner Bros. have not confirmed this rumor.
