Akira Live-Action Film Test Footage – CWAR!
Happy Friday FanBros. It’s Cartoons With A Robot time. And today we’re taking a look something that fallen through the cracks of time. Maybe for good reason, maybe not.
Through a series of fortunate events, Jay Jayson of comicbook.com stumbled onto an Akira presentation by Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson. The presentation consisted of a rip reel followed by a few pieces of concept footage for what would have become a live-action Akira film. Unfortunately, as Robinson puts its “they couldn’t get the budget under 200 million bucks for that draft which was a bit rich for what was proposed as an R rated movie with no stars”
A quick bit of information regarding this video. A rip reel is a proof of concept developed by a director to give viewers an idea of what their film is going to look like. Using footage from the original Akira film, as well as a few other live-action pieces to set the tone for his idea, Robinson ends the presentation with a few original test shots that show what his vision could truly look like.
“This was the original presentation I put together to help WB secure the rights for Akira back in 2007. It consists of a trailer I cut using the original anime, a rip reel of references from other movies, and a few visual tests I did in a hurry to give an impression of the movie. The whole thing was put together in 3 frantic weeks fueled by a lot of coffee. I’m not a big fan of rip reels to be honest, because it’s hard to represent the movie you want to make by sampling other movies that don’t really look like it… and purists may balk at the “New Manhattan” in the trailer (this reverted to New Tokyo very soon afterwards by the first draft of the script.)”
Judging from his most recent concept trailer for Leviathan, maybe this live-action Akira wouldn’t have been so bad. Then again let’s just let sleeping dogs lie, or as Robin himself put it “at least I cut a pretty cool trailer for the original anime.”
