There may be some bad news for those who were looking forward to Taika Waititi‘s take on a live-action film version of ‘Akira’. The newly Academy Awarded director was locked in to helm ‘Akira’ for Warner Brothers, but had to postpone those plans when he signed on to return to craft ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ for Disney. Now it seems he may be having second thoughts about ‘Akira’.
After winning for Best Adapted Screenplay for ‘Jojo Rabbit’, Waititi sat down for a lengthy interview with Variety, and among the topics that came up was ‘Akira’. Here’s what he had to say:
“The whole thing went on hold. We had to keep pushing the dates, and it encroached on the Thor dates, which were immovable. So Akira ended up shifting two years down the track… Post-Thor. So I’m not sure if even in two years I’d be — I don’t know what I’m doing in f—ing two days… I think eventually it will happen. I’m just not sure if I’ll be doing it.”
Back in October, Waititi explained:
“Unfortunately, the timing with Akira, because we’ve been working really hard on the script, we had to keep pushing the start date for the shoot. We ended up having to push it a couple weeks too far, which actually ate into the Thor schedule, because they were very close together. And that got pushed again and again, and it just got too far into the Thor schedule to be able to make it work. And my first commitment was to Marvel to make that film, so now I’ve kind of had to take Akira and sort of shift it around to the tail-end of Thor and move it down a couple of years.”
At that time, it sounded like he would simply return to work on ‘Akira’ once he finished with ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’, but maybe it’s the fact that he now has an Academy Award, but the world is now his oyster. He can pretty much pick whatever projects he wants, and ‘Akira’, which Hollywood has been hoping to turn into an Americanized live-action movie for decades, might be too big a risk… or a headache.
‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ is already set to open in theaters on November 5, 2021. Production has not yet begun, as Waititi is still working on the screenplay. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (‘Someone Great’) just signed on to co-write with him. Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, and Tessa Thompson are set to return, with Portman’s Jane Foster becoming a new version of Thor. Waititi has confirmed that he will also reprise his voice role as Korg. In early January, word surfaced that Christian Bale was in talks to portray the film’s villain.
Do you still want to see Waititi take on ‘Akira’? Or should he focus on more personal projects, like ‘Jojo Rabbit’?
