It's hard for me to imagine exactly how the team behind the live-action Akira redo will make the insane and nigh unfollowable story palatable to a dumbed down American audience. The 1988 anime classic is brilliant in its absurdity as you become more and more deeply immersed in the dementia of the characters. And it wasn't without source material; the story was a serial comic release between 1982 and 1990, which Dark Horse collected the into six volumes starting in 2000, releasing the rest throughout 2001 and 2002.

Collider has it after an interview with producer Andrew Lazar that newbie screenwriter Albert Torres will hold the sacred pen that will either delight or enrage a legion of fanboys already pissed off at the remake. The role of Kaneda (who will surely be renamed), was rumored to have been taken by Leonardo DiCaprio, who is getting a little too old to play a rebellious teenager in a motorcycle gang. Torres' only screenwriting work is the Luke Wilson starrer Henry Poole Is Here, a middling comedy that received generally "meh" reviews. That doesn't inspire very much confidence.

Lazar also mentioned how much the studio appreciates Akira story as a franchise, which breeds a little hope that the producers will aim to take things slowly and tell the whole story in sequels rather than trying to cram eight years worth of serialized material into one two hour film. There is a way to do this story right, but it is on a fine line. Go too far one way and it'll be just like every adaptation you see of a foreign film, way over explained with the nuances of the original completely ignored. Too far the other way and it becomes a complicated mess with too many characters to properly follow.

Best of luck to Warner Bros, Lazar and Torres with this project in this Herculean task they're undertaking. My only hope is that the director they find for the piece will be able to tell the expansive sci-fi story clearly. Somebody call Neill Blomkamp immediately. More news on this as we get it.

Here's the brief IMDb rundown:

A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psionic psychopath that only two kids and a group of psionics can stop.