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Ken Watanabe

Nope. Still Not Happening.

The Akira Remake Is On Hold

by Jamie Frevele | 4:20 pm, January 5th, 2012

We’ve been bringing you very interesting movie news all day today, and the afternoon hours have not disappointed us. Why? Because production on the much-maligned whitewashed remake of Akira has been put on hold. While the higher-ups reconsider the budget (and try to cut $20 million out of it), production offices in Vancouver are sending their employees home and being told to “stop working.” Is it the end? Maybe not. But is the universe trying to send some sort of signal to Warner Bros.? We’d like to think so.

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I See What They Did There

Akira Looks to Hire Its First Non-White Actor: Ken Watanabe

by Susana Polo | 2:43 pm, November 23rd, 2011

It’s sad to say, but movies studios that do not use the opportunities that lie before them to cast non-white actors in roles that would be great opportunities for non-white actors to play the sorts of roles that are rarely open to them do not surprise me. I’m much more likely to blink in astonishment and delight when studios hire non-white actors to play characters who, had they just hired a white actor, no one would have otherwise blinked at. See Thor and the upcoming Man of Steel. We need a word for when you are pleasantly surprised simply because your expectations were so low.

No, what really surprises me about the Akira casting is that every step the studio makes appears to be perfectly calculated to reinforce the idea that maintaining any ties to the integral cultural setting of Akira is absolutely last on the list of priorities. However, finally, the production appears to be courting it’s first non-white actor, and Ken Watanabe is not only actually Asian, but actually Japanese, a distinction of nationality that I don’t have high hopes for Hollywood ever getting through its head.

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