Deadline has discovered the short list of actors who are up for the roles of Kaneda and Tetsuo in Warner Bros. live action adaptation of Akira. According to the site, Robert Pattinson, Andrew Garfield and James McAvoy are being considered for Tetsuo (the “bad” guy), while Garrett Hedlund, Michael Fassbender, Chris Pine, Justin Timberlake and Joaquin Phoenix have been handed the script to play Kaneda (the “good” guy).
This is a project that has been in production for some time, it was first announced back in 2008. The film has done the on-again-off-again dance so many times, that one wonders if we’ll ever see it move out of Pre-Pro Hell into actual production.
11 Comments
Wow … really? That’s who they want to chose from to play Tetsuo? I’m afraid to see who they’ll get for Kennada. Is Justin Beiber going to be playing Akira? It’s bad enough that I can’t get a copy of the film with the original dialogue … now this? WTF?!
Are you talking about in Japanese? Or the original dubbing that had Cam Kennedy aka Liquid Snake?
The original English dub. The Streamline; not the Pioneer one.
Cam Kennedy? you mean Cam Clarke. Right?
Where people thought “Watchmen” to be unfilmable, and should never grace screens liveaction. I feel the same with this. If you want to use an all Japanese cast, fine, but Americanizing it will make it AKIRA in name only. And a white boy named Tetsuo?!
What are they going to call Kaneda, Kane?
And Tetsuo, Ted?
TEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!
KANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEE!!!
Nope. Doesn’t work. Bow out before it’s too late.
Good way to put it
its going to be like watching Enter the Dragon without BRUCE LEE and with Chuck Norris. The last air bender was rubbish and so was DBZ, needs to be a japanese cast “everyone” you’d have to be retarded not to watch it cause of subtitles.
I am white and what I know of Akira, no white people should be casted as leads in this movie. They honestly should not even be making this movie.
They shouldnt make this live action. To say that the film industry did watchmen, guyver, dbz or Judge Dredd or even Tekken any justice would be wrong. Dont touch what isnt broken
I don’t see why they are casting non asians for the roles, Rain would have been great in this project.
Wow… this is ludicrous, there should be no white people in this movie, I got all excited seeing it was being made into a movie, however I would agree with you all about adaptations with the exception of Watchmen which I thought was an excellent adaptation, even got rid of the dodgy squid.
As for who should be playing Tetsuo, my money would be on the fella that played Shuya Nanahara in the movie adaptation of Battle Royale… (of which was another excellent adaptation of the book/graphic novel)…
You’re a bit late on this story – right now the production has shut down because of the actor backlash.