Warner Bros. to Produce Live-Action Akira Film [Update]

Between Dragon Ball and Street Fighter, there seems to be a lot of Live Action news going around lately. Courtesy of Warner Bros., we’ll be seeing a couple of Live-Action adaptions of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira manga series split across two films; the first of the films is set to be released in Summer 2009. Each film is set to cover 3 of the 6 volumes.

This is not the first time Warner Bros. has had to acquire rights for Akira. They previously once had the film rights for Akira, but Executive Vice-President of Warner Bros. Greg Silverman (300, Batman Begins) had to acquire them once more from Japanese publisher Kodansha post bidding which, after going around, reached seven figures.

Set to direct the film will be Ireland’s Ruairi Robinson alongside Gary Whitta (Book of Eli) who will be writing the script. No information as to the cast has been made available.

Source: ANN

Update: According to Anime UK News, Leonardo DiCaprio, who not only has signed on as a producer, will also be joining the cast as Kaneda. In addition, as opposed to being set in New-Tokyo, this film will be set in “New Manhattan” (”A metropolis that was rebuilt after being destroyed 31 years earlier”). While we shall express that these reports remain unconfirmed (Anime UK News provides no source), we’ll leave it to those in our comment section to express their reactions to these developments.