Japanese director Katsuhiro Otomo confirmed at the Anime Expo in Los Angeles this week that a “new anime adaptation project” of the 1988 cult-classic dystopian cyberpunk movie is in the works, with a 4K Blu-ray remaster of the original movie also expected to launch in 2020.
Akira was based on a series of manga, also written by Otomo and published in Weekly Young Magazine between 1982 and 1990, about a civil rebellion in a post-apocalyptic, militarised Tokyo. The plot of the movie, however, featured significant differences to the manga, and excludes most of the events of its second half. That’s according to the internet, anyway, because I watched it like 20 years ago, and I was kind of drunk at the time, and the only thing I remember about it was some guy screaming “TETSUOOOOOO!” and a lot of red.
Otomo’s company Sunrise Intl. hasn’t confirmed much about the new version, including whether it’s a TV series or a movie or what, but has confirmed that in the meantime it’s also started production on Orbital Era, an entirely new animated sci-fi movie that “takes place in the near-future on a space colony under construction”.