Keanu Reeves In Talks For Live-Action Akira Adaptation

There’s a green light for the live-action adaptation of Akira and rumors have been circling around possible actors for the lead roles, including Robert Pattison and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

The latest name — and now a strong possibility for the role of Kaneda, one of the two main characters — is The Matrix star Keanu Reeves.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Reeves has been in talks with Warner Bros., and while nothing is official yet, the talks are going well. They speculate that having Keanu Reeves’ name attached might help get another big name for the other main character, Tetsuo.

Reeves is a known fan of anime, and for some time has been trying to get a live-action Cowboy Bebop going. He’s also been in the news lately because of talk about a third Bill and Ted movie from the franchise that took him to stardom.

Albert Hughes (“Book Of Eli”) is attached to direct the sci-fi film based on Katsuhiro Otomo’s highly successful manga series, which was one of the first to be widely read by a Western audience. A popular, feature-length anime version was also made in 1988.

Now with that being said and not wanting to get into the ‘there should be Japanese actors in Akira’. I really don’t Keanu is the right actor to fit into Akira. Yes I liked him in The Matrix and I can watch him in Constantine but I don’t think he could put the levels of intensity that are shown by Kaneda in the Anime…

We need to wait and see…

What do you all think on this?

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