Warner Brothers Shuts Down AKIRA

The movie that refuses to die may have just died.

After years of development, two directors (Ruari Robinson and Albert Hughes), and a compression of the story from a two film epic with a budget to match down to a single film priced at ninety mil, it appeared that Warner Brothers were finally ready to go ahead with their live action Americanization of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira. They have a director in Jaume Collet-Sera. They have a script by Steve Kloves. Heck, they've even got a good chunk of the cast sorted out. Good to go, right?

Whoopsie.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Brothers have just shut down the Vancouver production office of Akira and all work has stopped. Why? That's up for debate. Some sources say that Warners wants to further reduce the budget, in which case this is a tactic similar to what Disney did with The Lone Ranger. Others say it is issues with script and cast. No matter what the reasons are things aren't looking so good for Akira. Will this be the end of the project or will the issues be resolved and work resumed? Time will tell in the end ... give it a week or two and things should fall into place either way.