Watch The Fan-Made Akira Live-Action Trailer

Hollywood has long been trying to get a live-action Akira off the ground. Various directors and scriptwriters have taken various approaches to trying to adapt the anime classic. For fans this has always seemed like something of a fools errand. If you take out the things that made it so revolutionary - the fact that it was animated and Japanese- then is it really Akira?

While the official adaptation continues to stall (the rights were with Warner Bros at last reckoning) a group of fans stepped in.

The Akira Project is an unofficial 100% fan-made, crowdfunded live-action Akira trailer- and it's surprisingly bad-ass. Following a successful Indiegogo campaign, the short was subsequently shot a few months later before a year and half of post-production. The film-makers finally finished up this year, and it's now online for your enjoyment.

According to the description "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.  "






Obviously it can't compete with Hollywood production values but it makes up for it with spirit. Regardless, it's more faithful than any big-budget production is ever likely to be. For a start it does something Hollywood would never do, and actually dares (*gasp!*) to actually have an Asian-led cast. No white-washing here.  Watch it, enjoy it and pray that the official Hollywood-isation never actually sees the light of day. Or we might end up with this...