Warner Brothers may have taken a long time to finally decide that it wanted to make a live action adaption of the classic anime feature Akira, but now that it has given the go-ahead, director Jaume Collet-Serra is diving head first into casting.
In addition to Tron: Legacy’s Garrett Hedlund reportedly being the frontrunner for the lead role of Kaneda, it is being reported that Gary Oldman and Helena Bonham Carter have both been offered roles in the film.
Oldman is being offered the role of The Colonel, the head of a government project that experiments on people with the potential for psychic powers in order to turn them into weapons. Bonham Carter would play Lady Miyako, a former test subject of the Colonel’s program who aides Kaneda is freeing his friend Akira from the Colonel’s clutches.
Both actors have a few projects already on their schedules. Oldman is set to do Guns, Girls And Gambling with Christian Slater and Dane Cook, and director John Hillcoat’s The Wettest County in the World. Meanwhile, Bonham Carter has just wrapped her work on Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows and is currently playing Miss Havisham in Mike Newell’s Great Expectations. She also has Tom Hooper’s adaption of the musical Les Miserables for next year, though it is possible that will commence later than Akira’s planned late February/early March start date.
Via Twitch.
