Jordan Peele Doesn’t Regret Leaving ‘Akira’ Live-Action Remake

Though Taika Waititi now has the project in his hands, Jordan Peele would at one point be the director tasked with turning the ‘Akira’ remake into a live-action version into reality. Now, the director of “Nope” and “Get Out” explains why he left the project and why, after so long, he doesn’t regret leaving behind a title that was fundamental to the anime.

In an interview for Happy Sad Confused, Jordan Peele explained why he left ‘Akira’. For practical purposes, the director says that he prefers to tell completely original stories, and not build on existing material, as he demonstrated with ‘Get Out’, ‘We’ and ‘Nope’. Also, in the most recent film he paid a small tribute to Katsuhiro Otomo’s film.

Director, Jordan Peele does not regret leaving the remake of ‘Akira’, as he himself says: “It’s a project that fascinates me. I’m glad I didn’t because I feel like… walking away from that, trying to interpret that IP has put me on the road to creating something new. But I want to see Neo-Tokyo. I want to see an all-Japanese cast. I want to feel immersed in his world.

The main reason is that Jordan Peele wanted to see Japanese actors in the remake of ‘Akira’ to be totally faithful to the idea of ​​the anime. The director had already clarified this in 2017, during a conversation with Blumhouse: “Akira is one of my favorite films, and I think that, obviously, the story justifies a budget as big as you can dream. But the real question for me is do I want to create pre-existing material or do I want to create original content? Ultimately, I want to do original things.”

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What is currently happening with the “Akira” remake?

Currently the remake of ‘Akira’ is in the hands of Taika Waititi, having passed through directors such as Christopher Nolan, Jaume Collet-Serra and even protagonists such as Leonardo DiCaprio or even Robertt Pattinson. However, the director of ‘Jojo Rabbitt’ has quite a few projects ahead of him until he comes up with this anime film classic.

And is that Waititi is working with the second season of ‘Our Flags Means Death’ and ‘Next Goal Wins’. While his film ‘Star Wars’ is still in production on the big screen and an adaptation of the comic by Alejandro Jodorowksy and Moebius, ‘El Incal’. So there is no date yet for the ‘Akira’ remake.

We will have to wait a long time before knowing what Taika Waititi has planned with the remake of ‘Akira’, and who will be the protagonists who will give life to Tetsuo and Kaneda in this cyberpunk universe that has inspired so many modern works, such as ‘ Ghost in the Shell’ or the saga ‘The Matrix’, among many others.