'The Akira Project' Is A Live-Action Akira Trailer Made By Fans

Katsuhiro Otomo's 1988 anime Akira is a classic. So, of course, Hollywood wants to remake it. However, the story is so sprawling and pessimistic, no one has been able to settle on a budget that would be financially feasible. Even some of the biggest stars in the world couldn't make a live action Akira happen in the Hollywood system. Especially not with the respect for the story fans would demand.

Enter The Akira Project, a "crowd-sourced, non-profit project" that used IndieGoGo to make a full length fan trailer. Now, this is not for a movie, though the filmmakers would love to do that in the future. But it shows what passionate fans can do. Make a beautiful, faithful and respectful remake of a classic anime. Check out the live action Akira trailer below.

Here's the live action Akira trailer by producer/director Nguyen-Anh Nguyen.

You can read much, much more about the film at its official website: www.akira-project.com. The lengths this project went to give fans lots of stuff to enjoy are pretty incredible . Here's all the background:

The Akira Project is a crowd-sourced, non-profit project meant to create a live action fan trailer of AKIRA, the renowned manga-turned-anime film from the late 1980?s; a stunning example of both mediums as art forms. While Hollywood has been working on a live-action Akira movie for a few years now, we, as fans, wanted to take a shot at making our own adaptation. A chance to stick as close to the source material as possible. A chance to do Akira Justice.

We launched an Indiegogo campaign  in July 2012 as part of a crowd sourcing effort to make this project come to life. Many people contributed not just financially but offered their time and talent to help the production that was shot in Montreal, Quebec from November 2-5th 2012. What started out as a simple idea between two guys having a beer (Hey! It'd be cool to see Kaneda ride his bike around Neo-Tokyo!), became a global endeavour, filled with adventures and hurdles, involving more than 40 artists in 12 different countries.

After a year and a half in post-production, we are proud to present the project to Akira fans the world over. We hope to have done justice to the timeless work of Katsuhiro Otomo and look forward to, someday, seeing the full scope of the Akira story translated to the big screen as a live-action.

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