Hughes Brothers jump into the anime remake race

A year ago we learned that Keanu Reeves was working on a live action Cowboy Bebop remake at Fox. Peter Berg delivered a first draft of a script that Keanu says Fox estimated would cost half a billion dollars to make. (and that was a pre-Avatar estimate) That was the best anime adaptation story going — until we saw the live action Space Battleship Yamato (trailer below). Cheesy? Of course. But accurate!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONkh786EbSg

When Warner Brothers announced they were picking up “Death Note”, it was clear that anime adaptations were becoming the new comic adaptations.

Now, we’ve seen big budget adaptations like “Blood” and, let’s be honest, the Matrix movies owe their very existence to “Ghost In The Shell”. But now the latest adaptation, reportedly at Warner Brothers, is looking to up the ante.

According to Claude Brodesser-Akner at New York magazine’s Vulture blog, the “Akira” remake that Leonardo DiCaprio has been working on? Has a director. Actually, two. Warner Bros. is negotiating to reteam with The Book of Eli‘s Hughes brothers to have them direct a live-action remake of 1988′s Akira, from a script written by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (Iron Man).

Here’s the original anime trailer, in case you’re not like us and watch this movie 4 times a year.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQnw35kR6Pw

There is a long list of anime that have been rumored to be made into a live action movies. Most have been really bad ideas (except for, of course, the Ghost In The Shell visual cues in The Matrix movies). We’ve seen some noble live action attempts from projects like and then, of course, there was this:

The biggest live action anime adaptation in the works right now is arguably the Cowboy Bebop project Keanu Reeves is working on. Warner Brothers refuses to let that be the only game in town, and the story now (accoring to New York Magazine’s Vulture