DBE was the best comedy I've ever seen so don't make fun of it. That said I really hope they don't ruin somthing like Akira....

Nothing has changed, Star Wars, Indiana Jones and The Good, The Bad, The Ugly are all blatant rip offs that are essentially remakes of Japanese movies. Additionally, there are still plenty of original and brilliant movies being made.

Another cult classic anime Rurouni Kenshin or better known as samurai X is getting the live action treatment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObdlLp7gkYA

It seems like they are only going to do one of the early archs a bit saddening, I was hoping for either Kyoto Arch or the past Arch of Kenshins early years.

I obviously missed this thread when you originally posted this but I saw it recently and meant to check it out. Right around the same time I started seeing ads for this.....



.....and thought for sure this was the flick.
About the real Akira, I have mixed feelings. I guess one of the Nolan boys could be viewed as positive though. Akira is so fucking beastly though that I'm more inclined to feel like they should not mess with it. Just think there is a whole generation of young cats that don't know about Akira

This movie has been in development hell for years. In all likelihood it will never get made. It has completely unproven mainstream appeal, is not a very easy movie to go into, a very hard marketing sell and would require a pretty hefty budget.

Only way I could see it getting made would be if Neil Blomkamp got on board with Peter Jackson backing him lol. Even then I would expect Neo Tokyo and all the cool bikes / setting that came with it to become L.A or New York.

As it is though it would be a very hard sell. Especially since success in anime form most definitely doesn't mean success in live action. DBZ is possibly the most popular anime ever worldwide, that movie did pretty awful (although it didn't help that the movie stunk to high heaven)

Although I would add that doing horrendous live action movies based on anime/manga isn't strictly a Western thing. Japan does it too. Devilman got an utterly horrendous live action movie (that's where my avatar comes from!)