Last February, we knew Mila Kunis was bailing on the new Akira remake to play a wicked witch, but now we’re hearing casting rumors on the male leads. Andrew Garfield, Robert Pattinson and James McAvoy have received the screenplay for the role of Tetsuo and Garrett Hedlund, Michael Fassbender, Chris Pine, Justin Timberlake and Joaquin Phoenix have the script for the role of the gang leader Shotaro Kaneda, Tetsuo’s friend. The casting decisions may seem off, but apparently the producers are moving the setting from Neo-Tokyo to New Manhattan to garner a wider audience.
Akira is the six-volume graphic anime novel from Katsuhiro Otomo. Steve Kloves (Wonder Boys, seven of the eight Harry Potter movies) is said to be polishing the script for Warner Brothers. The original Japanese film was released in 1988 about a futuristic post-war city called Neo-Tokyo in 2019. (Not so far into the future for us now.)
