By Back when the live-action Akira remake was greenlit in October, I jokingly predicted that news of delays would show up by late December. Turns out I was close.
Warner Brothers has stopped production on Akira in order to cut the $90 million budget to around $60-$70 million. Director Jaume Collet-Serra is going to work with producers Jennifer Kiloran Davisson and Andrew Lazar to see if this is feasible. If not, the production returns to development hell.
In the meantime, the production offices in Vancouver are being closed, and crew members have been instructed to halt work and go home.
These proposed new budget numbers are roughly one-third the budget that Albert Hughes was given when he was still attached to Akira back in early 2011. For some scale using 2011 films, Conan the Barbarian, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and The Three Musketeers were all budgeted around $90 million. In the $60-$70 million range, you had movies like War Horse, Priest, and Killer Elite. To quote Dr. Peter Venkman, “This chick is toast.”
[Heat Vision via Dark Horizons]