Jumping off from the story reported just a few short hours ago, Variety is now confirming that Jaume Collet-Serra will direct Warner Brothers' live-action film based on the classic manga and anime, Akira
. He'll be replacing Albert Hughes(Menace II Society
), who bailed on the film in May amidst repeated delays and casting squabbles.The once big budgeted film has seen it's cost slashed to roughly $90M, thanks to a new script drafted by Steve Kloves(Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
). Now the question turns to who will star in the film, about a pair of rebellious friends who find themselves in the midst of a government experiment gone awry. The story has been reworked to take it out of Japan and into a fictional place called New Manhattan. Candidates to star had previously focused on a combination of young and older talent, including Keanue Reeves, Michael Fassbender, Robert Pattinson, and Garrett Hedlund. This is a solid choice by Warner Brothers. Collet-Serra surprised me with how good his horror remake of House of Wax
turned out. In 2009 he gave us the adoptee slasher flick, Orphan
, which turned a hefty profit mostly on word of mouth. Earlier this year he was behind the camera for Unknown
, the Liam Neeson thriller which suffered from a disjointed script moreso than anything else.
