What Would the Live-Action ‘Akira’ Film Have Looked Like?

'Akira,' the one Japanese movie property that Hollywood has been trying so hard to get ahold of but fans constantly shudder at the thought of. Once upon a time a filmmaker by the name of Ruairi Robinson teamed up with wonderful concept artist Sylvain Despretz and began to form his vision for a live-action 'Akira' through a small series of illustrations. Unfortunately both himself and the project parted ways from each other and his vision on 'Akira' lost, that is until today.

Regardless of our own opinions, Warner Bros Pictures has been trying their hardest to lift the Americanized live-action 'Akira' off the ground. They supposedly have 'TRON: Legacy' actor Garrett Hedlund in the lead role of Kaneda and were still in the hunt for Tetsuo until the project died once again.

io9 presents a small series of concept art images that show us what the beginning of Robinson's live-action 'Akira' movie would have looked like from a visual standpoint. It appears that they were still aiming to have an all-American blonde boy in the role of Kaneda, which explains why they wanted to cast Hedlund just physically speaking.

As far as Warner Bros Pictures' 'Akira' is concerned, it's dead in the water. They've been trying to get this going since 2002, and since the increasingly low sales of Japanese comic books have shown that most Americans are no longer interested, it'll be interesting to see how Warner Bros can still justify why they should resurrect this movie once more.