Gary Oldman Won’t Join AKIRA. WB Now Wants Ken Watanabe To Play The Colonel

WB’s Americanized live action AKIRA movie might get to have a Japanese actor after all. For quite some time now it’s been reported that WB wanted Gary Oldman to play the role of the colonel but deals with Oldman didn’t work out, the actor turned down the offer and so Twitch reported that WB has now offered the role to Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai, Inception).
Watanabe is a remarkable actor but will his involvement be enough to redeem this project that has angered a lot of AKIRA purist fans out there?..

Garrett Hedlund will play the lead role of the bike leader Kaneda. Helena Bonham Carter and Keira Knightley were said to have been approached for a currently undisclosed roles
And WB wants Ken Watanabe to play the colonel.
Twilight and SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN star Kristen Stewart reportedly has been offered the female lead role of KEI, who is Kaneda’s love interest

A lot of young actors are screen-testing for the role of Tetsuo

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson Killoran will produce via their shingle, Appian Way, in collaboration with Andrew Lazar‘s Mad Chance.
Katsuhiro Otomo, who wrote and directed 1988′s Japanese anime movie version, will exec-produce

AKIRA, based on anime artist Katsuhiro Otomo’s six-volume graphic novel masterwork, is set in a futuristic post-nuclear war Tokyo in 2019 where a teen biker gang member is subjected to a government experiment which unleashes his latent powers. The gang’s leader must find a way to stop the ensuing swathe of destruction
BUT the movie version will be set in “New Manhattan,”