Nordling here.
When I spoke with Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby about AKIRA a few weeks back, their optimism for the project won me over. I'm still fairly skeptical about the idea of a remake of this particular property, but at least it seemed to me that it was coming from a place of love and respect for the original film. Now, according to Variety, it looks like a director has been found for AKIRA, which has been in limbo for several months. That director is Jaume Collet-Serra (ORPHAN, UNKNOWN), who isn't the first director to come to mind when it comes to this film, but Warners seems to have confidence in him. They have reassessed the film's budget for $90 million dollars.
Warners is probably concerned that the budget with this film could easily run away from them, and Collet-Serra has a reputation for being prompt and frugal, and his films have been box office successes. AKIRA is epic in scope, and I'd imagine budget concerns are priority in a project like this, which is why on the books Collet-Serra makes sense. ORPHAN is a pretty insane film, and a lot of fun, and I hope that Collet-Serra brings some of that confidence to AKIRA.
Nordling, out.
