Warner Bros. greenlights live-action Akira for 2012
According to Variety, the studio has finally made it official with a greenlight for a $90 million budget and an eye toward a late February/early March start date. The report confirms that Jaume Collett-Serra (Unknown) will direct...

The studio provides this synopsis for the Steve Kloves script: Set in New Manhattan, the cyberpunk sci-fi epic follows the leader of a biker gang who must save his friend, discovered with potentially destructive psychokinetic abilities, from government medical experiments.

Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy) is a frontrunner for one of the leads (most likely Kaneda) while the shortlist of actors for Tetsuo is allegedly Robert Pattinson, Andrew Garfield, James McAvoy.

Edit: Thanks to

	sandglass 2011-10-21 01:45 am UTC (link)
	I just looked it up, and oh good god, The Last Airbender apparently made like $150-200mill. So lets hope it's not a repeat of that. (What the fuck, movie watching public? Do you seriously have that much money burning a hole in your wallet, that you have to spend it on that abomination of a movie?) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	blue_penguin 2011-10-21 06:20 am UTC (link)
	Jesus Christ, how did that movie not tank? Even with the whitewashing bullshit left aside, it was just a terrible movie. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	ekaterinv 2011-10-21 06:57 am UTC (link)
	According to what I found on Google, it cost $150 million to make, and Paramount spent another $130 million promoting it. So they lost at least $80 million on the deal, and I doubt rentals will make up for that. Considering those figures, the fact that Warner is still going along with this new hell is gobsmacking. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sandglass 2011-10-21 07:05 am UTC (link)
	OH! I completely forgot to factor in promotion. However, the $150-200mill I guessed already subtracted the $150m budget, and hey made more than $300m on the original screenings. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ekaterinv 2011-10-21 07:09 am UTC (link)
	Barf. Well, I don't know anyone who goes to movies (except my dad, and we don't talk about new movies since he told me he loved Revenge of the Sith), so I have no clue why anyone would go to The Last Airbender or this new shambling horror named Akira. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	shadwing 2011-10-21 07:36 pm UTC (link)
	Don't forget the slap-dash tacked on 3D, and the critical panning it got from critics, the target audience and the built in fan base. It might have made some money back but it wasn't enough to greenlight the other two films. So yeah it made SOME money but it was no blockbuster (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	the__ivorytower 2011-10-21 08:07 pm UTC (link)
	I know a couple of That Guy With The Glasses critics went to see it (Brad Jones and Joe Vargas) and neither of them even suggested people watch it. Joe was particularly vehement in his 'no, do not give them money, even for the laughs' about it. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	full_metal_ox 2011-10-21 10:25 pm UTC (link)
	Here's the link to that review: http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/ir/yrt/specials/30277-the-last-airbender (I particularly like the one reviewer's bellow of pain as "Ong"'s name is first pronounced.) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	sandglass 2011-10-22 06:11 am UTC (link)
	I thought they were making The Last Airbender 2? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	dragonsong12 2011-10-24 03:04 pm UTC (link)
	No, it still hasn't been greenlit. You're probably thinking of Shyamalan having already written book 2, but Nick apparently hasn't taken him up on it yet. (Reply to this)(Parent)