According to a report at Bloody Disgusting this morning, the planned attempt to make a live action version of iconic anime movie Akira is now dead in the water.

Announced formally just over a year ago, and with a director attached in the form of Ruairí Robinson and Leonardo DiCaprio's production company involved, it seemed that work was well underway.

The report, however, now suggests that Robinson has quit the film, and that, according to a pair of unnamed sources (and, to be fair, Bloody Disgusting did break the news of the film in the first place ahead of everyone else), the project has now been put into turnaround. In fact, the phrase "dead as a doornail" is the one that's being used.

If sounded to us a remarkably ambitious project in the first place, and it perhaps reinforces an argument that animation can do things that live action simply can't, and perhaps it's best to leave the status quo as it is? We'll never find out, it seems, whether Akira could have been the exception to that rule...

Bloody Disgusting