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NEWS: Thor: Ragnarok Film Director Waititi Wants to Adapt Akira Manga With Asian Actors


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Gemnist



Joined: 10 Feb 2016
Posts: 1754
PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 11:09 pm Reply with quote
As if that will stop the controversy...
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MagusGuardian



Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Posts: 589
PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 11:16 pm Reply with quote
wow for a minute I thought this was yet Another article about warner brothers changing directors
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catandmouse



Joined: 02 Mar 2011
Posts: 212
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 12:25 am Reply with quote
Well if they give him a smaller budget ( that way the studio might be more flexible)and leave him to his own devices then this theoretical movie might actually be ok. It has to be more like an Indy backed up by a big studio in order for his vision to work. I really liked his movie "What we do in the shadows" I think he's a good director. We'll have to see how Thor: Ragnarok comes out
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Effy42



Joined: 14 Sep 2017
Posts: 3
Location: Columbus, OH
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:21 am Reply with quote
Taika is a good writer and director. I think he'd do a good job with an adaptation of Akira. It probably won't happen, unfortunately.
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Guile



Joined: 18 Jun 2013
Posts: 595
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:56 am Reply with quote
Didn't he cast black actors as Norse Gods? He doesn't seem like he'd be all that faithful to the source material given his past adaptions.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 2:18 am Reply with quote
MagusGuardian wrote:
wow for a minute I thought this was yet Another article about warner brothers changing directors


Yes, my reaction on reading the header was something between "Oh, he's the new guy?", and (to paraphrase the old WC Fields film), "Line up, sucker!"

Unless Waititi can actually get a live frame of film shot by the end of next year, let's just accept that we will NEVER, ever get an Akira film, and we'll all lead happier lives.
I mean, we know a lot more about anime than we did when the project was first announced, and now it doesn't sound as cool anymore. Confused
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 2:27 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Regarding casting, he said, "Actually Asian teenagers would be the way to do it for me and probably no, not, like no name, I mean sort of unfound, untapped talent."

Would such plans meet the approval of the powers that be within Warner Brothers? While this is, on paper, the most positive news I have heard about this project, apprehensions would hardly be ill-founded.
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Egan Loo



Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 1300
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 2:59 am Reply with quote
Guile wrote:
Didn't he cast black actors as Norse Gods? He doesn't seem like he'd be all that faithful to the source material given his past adaptions.


Kenneth Branagh cast Idris Elba as Heimdall, two directors before Taika Waititi. The Thor movies are an adaptation of the Thor comics, which are anything but a faithful adaptation of Norse mythology.

https://www.inverse.com/article/31058-thor-ragnarok-chris-hemsworth-loki-norse-mythology-hammer-comics
https://io9.gizmodo.com/8-things-marvel-got-wrong-about-thor-and-norse-mytholog-1458989921

To quote Branagh:

"If you're going to say the colour of his skin matters in a story like this, look at 50 years of Thor comics to see how many ways great artists have bent alleged 'rules'."

https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/branagh-idris-elba-thor-casting/
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Amaranth Sparrow



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 97
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 4:04 am Reply with quote
catandmouse wrote:
Well if they give him a smaller budget

Akira is something that can absolutely not be done in live action with a "smaller budget." If we're not looking at a minimum of $150m per film (and it would presumably be a duology or trilogy if adapting the manga) then it's frankly not even worth attempting.

And given the poor box office performance of both Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner 2049, I'm not sure any movie studio is going to be keen on backing another cyberpunk film, let alone an entire film series. Even if Akira is certainly more action-packed than Blade Runner.

A $450m budget trilogy adapted from the manga, with a primarily Asian cast, directed by someone extremely talented like Christopher Nolan or George Miller would be absolutely amazing. It doesn't even need an entirely Asian cast since the manga has a decent number of Western characters (like the US Marines sent to assassinate Akira and Tetsuo).

It will probably be controversial to say, but I honestly think of all the Warner Bros. directors, Zack Snyder would probably have the best shot of getting this made, and made well. His visual style would suit Akira almost perfectly (compare this to this), he's shown with 300 and Watchmen that he can adapt from source material quite faithfully, and the series inherently has all the ultraviolent, superkinetic action sequences he likes to direct.

But it's extremely unlikely that this will ever happen. It's more likely that it'll get written and rewritten dozens of times, land in the lap of some unfortunate young, talented director whose career will depend on it, get way too small a budget and way too much executive interference, release to lackluster box office numbers, and be yet another blemish on the history of live action anime adaptations.
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Watanabefan



Joined: 02 Oct 2017
Posts: 152
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 8:12 am Reply with quote
We're in an age where blockbuster films have become more spectacle and IP-driven rather than based around big name A-list stars. With the right marketing or brand attached you can sell an audience on almost anything (look at how many of the lead actors in Marvel films were nobodies and up-and-comers like Chris Hemsworth and Chadwick Boseman, or people you'd never think to build an action movie around like Chris Pratt).

I don't think Akira has the right brand clout but I think with good marketing, you could get people hype about it even with unknown leads as Kaneda and Tetsuo. That's something that gets lost in the shuffle of the Ghost in the Shell movie. Controversy about the cast aside, it straight up did not have good marketing. The film was EVERYWHERE but unless you were actually familiar with the source material (most Americans are not), it didn't actually do a good job selling you on the movie.

If they'd spent less money on the lead actress and maybe a little more on a marketing department that knew what it was doing, they might not have lost 60 million.
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Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 10:19 am Reply with quote
Hopefully he's ends up being signed on we need a non-disasterpiece live action adaptation of an anime, he should aim for mainstream anime audiences with the film instead of a general audience because another problem with these films is that it's aimed at a general audience not anime fans which also makes them universally despised.
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Watanabefan



Joined: 02 Oct 2017
Posts: 152
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 10:21 am Reply with quote
Hoppy800 wrote:
Hopefully he's ends up being signed on we need a non-disasterpiece live action adaptation of an anime, he should aim for mainstream anime audiences with the film instead of a general audience because another problem with these films is that it's aimed at a general audience not anime fans which also makes them universally despised.


Anime fans aren't a big enough demographic to carry a huge blockbuster film. It's the same reason superhero movies aren't solely aimed at comic book readers but at mass audiences.

Trust me, there hasn't been a single anime live-action film whose biggest problem thus far has been that general audiences don't watch anime.
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residentgrigo



Joined: 23 Dec 2007
Posts: 2404
Location: Germany
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 12:04 pm Reply with quote
Hunt for the Wilderpeople was one of the best films in years and he is very gifted in general but i don´t see him as the best choice for Akira. Not that any of this means anything at this stage.
Get Denis Villeneuve on the line instead... and then have another near perfect budget money sink on your hands, as let´s face it. The Cyberpunk genre has been dead for a decade.

Keep the budget reasonable and adapt it as a steaming service mini series. Anything else will be incapable of making money, even if the end result is great. Sad but true.
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Lord Oink



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
Posts: 876
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 12:08 pm Reply with quote
Saying you want to do something is different than actually doing it.

"Guys, I totally wanted an Asian lead for Mokoto, but the evil big bad Hollywood forced me to use ScarJo."

Egan Loo wrote:

Kenneth Branagh cast Idris Elba as Heimdall, two directors before Taika Waititi. The Thor movies are an adaptation of the Thor comics, which are anything but a faithful adaptation of Norse mythology


He did blackwash Valkyrie though, and religiously tried to defend it.

Cue him casting a non Asian as Kaneda and saying he went with the best actor for the role, or blaming higher ups, or telling fans to stop being whiny.
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Watanabefan



Joined: 02 Oct 2017
Posts: 152
PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:39 pm Reply with quote
Lord Oink wrote:

He did blackwash Valkyrie though, and religiously tried to defend it.

Cue him casting a non Asian as Kaneda and saying he went with the best actor for the role, or blaming higher ups, or telling fans to stop being whiny.


Really? I don't see that at all. For one, he pointed to Valkyrie (who is being hailed as one of the best parts of the film, by the way) as being important because he believes there's a diversity problem in blockbuster films.

Casting white people as the leads in Akira is completely counter intuitive to that. In fact, I'm not even sure why that's being raised when he's explicitly said he'd push for that to not happen if he were chosen.
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