Akira is halted, Edgerton in Bigelow picture

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Production News

Pre-production has been halted on Warner Bros' live action remake of Japanese manga Akira (pictured).

Production offices in Vancouver, Canada, have been closed. Producers and director Jaume Collet-Serra (hired in July as a replacement for Albert Hughes) are to meet with scriptwriters over the next two weeks before deciding the project's fate.

However it is not clear whether the studio took the decision because of flaws in the screenplay or whether it wanted to alter the script in order to make further budget cuts. According to published reports the film's cost has already been halved and now stands around the $90 million mark.

Tron: Legacy star Garrett Hedlund is the only confirmed cast attachment, though Japan's WATANABE Ken 渡辺謙, Michael Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter are all reported to be in negotiations.

Warner bought the rights in 2008 from publisher Kodansha Ltd 講談社 some four years ago and set it up as a production through Andrew Lazar's Mad Chance company and Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson Killoran's Appian Way. It is set in a post-apocalyptic metropolis destroyed by a younger Akira, a boy with immense psychic powers. OTOMO Katsuhiro 大友克洋, who wrote the original manga and directed an anime adaptation in 1998, is credited as an executive producer.

 
Australian star Joel EDGERTON will head the cast in Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow's currently untitled film about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

The film is to be distributed by Sony Pictures and is financed by Megan Ellison's Annapurna Pictures (which is co-financing and has North American distribution rights to WONG Kar-wai 王家衛's upcoming The Grandmasters 一代宗師).

With a screenplay by Mark Boal, the film is set to shoot from next month and is aiming at a December 2012 release.

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