This year marks the 35th Anniversary of Akira's release of Katsuhiro Otomo's timeless classic, Akira. Released in 1982 as a manga and the as an anime film in 1988 (which Otomo directed), countless Western scifi films have cited Otomo's masterpiece as a major influence, including The Matrix, Chronicle and Looper. In celebration of the milestone, Forbes caught up with Otomo in his studio for a lengthy profile. Of particular interest were his thoughts on the live-action adaptation of Akira that Warner Bros. has been trying to make for almost a decade.
Said Otomo, "While I haven't seen the new live-action Ghost in the Shell, when it comes to Akira I have already finished the original manga and my own anime version too. So in that sense, I am basically done with Akira. If someone wants to do something new with Akira then I am mostly okay with that. As I accepted the offer for a live-action Akira to be made, so I am generally okay with whatever they want to do with it. However, I did give one major condition to a live-action version and that is that I had to check and approve the scenario."
That a rather interesting admission from Otomo. Essentially any adaptation has to receive his permission before moving forward so if he doesn't like it then it won't move forward. A few years back, the controversy and internet-outrage of what WB was planning with casting caucasian actors and chaning the setting of Akira from Tokyo to "Neo New York" was downright palpable. But if what Otomo says is correct, it didn't bother him one bit.
He went on to explain, “As always, the fundamental question on adapting anything is whether you follow the host work strictly or do something new with it, that is a never-ending discussion I think. This is especially true for film-based adaptations from novels, as the reader has to use their own imagination to bring it to life. Readers inherently have their own interpretation. That often means a movie's production has more creative freedom. That said, with things like manga it means the story already comes with very specific visuals. That makes it much harder for a film's production to go their own way with it. Personally, I think being entirely bound to the original manga of something like Akira would not make any sense as a movie. As for what I would do in terms of adapting Akira into my own live-action movie, I really don't want to do that. I would much rather do something entirely new and separate."