With Ryan Humphrey and James Harvey’s fan project BARTKIRA, which aims to recreate the classic trailer solely from SIMPSONS characters, acclaimed anime classic AKIRA quickly became a hot topic, and now news has broken that the live-action remake has stalled  . . . again.

Warner Bros. has had a live-action adaptation of that most pivotal anime film in the works for many years now, since picking up the rights back in 2008, but they haven’t had much in the way of success. The closest to completion came in 2012, but the studio quickly pulled the plug after the budget escalated. At the time TRON: LEGACY’s Garrett Hedlund was set to star in the lead with Jaume Collet-Serra (UNKNOWN and RUN ALL NIGHT) set to direct.

Collet-Serra rejoined the project as things seemingly started to gain steam again. It was revealed that the budgetary issues had been resolved in 2013, but some 18 months later the film is in the dreaded netherworld of film production.

Speaking to Collider, Collet-Serra revealed that “there’s nothing. . . I truly will not make a decision on a movie for a few months because I’ve done these two movies (Liam Neeson twaddle NON-STOP and RUN ALL NIGHT) in three years without any time off . . . my next movie’s not gonna be for a while, let’s put it this way.”

Although AKIRA might be up in the air, the outcome of Dreamworks’ upcoming GHOST IN THE SHELL live-action flick might play some part in Warner Bros. plans.

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