The Akira Project presented its results of a crowdfunding campaign that funded the creation of a fanmade live-action adaptation of Akira.
The Akira Project raised almost $3,500 in 2012 to recreate the manga turned animated film Akira as a live-action trailer. The fan project recently completed the trailer and released it online for everyone.
Producer and director Nguyen-Anh Nguyen, who was inspired to get into filmmaking after watching Akira, led the non-profit project. What started out as an idea to film the character Kaneda riding through Neo-Tokyo on his bike became a much larger project with a big team of people from 12 different countries.
Executive producer Osric Chau (Supernatural‘s Kevin Tran) also played the role of Kaneda. Xavier Yuvens plays the role of Tetsuo. The whole team is listed on the Akira Project website.
The trailer breaks down the film into much shorter segments to tell the story from beginning to end. However, to those who are unfamiliar with the source material, the brief retelling done through the live-action trailer may seem disjointed and confusing.
Along with a great recreation of Kaneda’s red bike, the computer graphics show off the destruction of Tetsuo’s powers. The trailer isn’t a big budget feature-length movie, but it’s a nice teaser of what fans expect out of a live-action adaptation of Otomo’s manga and anime.
Hollywood has been working on a live-action Akira film, adapting Katsuhiro Otomo’s animated film, though this has met its fair share of resistance with fans who do not want a white-washed film adaptation of a Japanese work.
Source: Akira Project
