Interest
Tron: Legacy's Garrett Hedlund Is Frontrunner for Akira Lead
posted on by Egan Loo
The entertainment trade magazine Variety updated its story on the green-lit live-action Akira film on Wednesday to report that Garrett Hedlund, the star of last year's Tron: Legacy film, is a frontrunner for one of Akira's two male leads. Although both the movie studio Warner Bros. and the director it hired, Jaume Collett-Serra (Unknown, Orphan, House of Wax), are interested in signing Hedlund, they could not make an offer to the actor until the film was green-lit.
In addition to starring as Sam Flynn in Tron: Legacy, Hedlund acted in Country Strong, Eragon, Four Brothers, Friday Night Lights, and Troy.
Variety reported that production on the live-action film adaptation of Katsuhiro Ōtomo's Akira manga is set to begin in late February or early March. According to the magazine, the film's current story goes as follows: "Set in New Manhattan, the cyberpunk sci-fi epic follows the leader of a biker gang who must save his friend, discovered with potentially destructive psychokinetic abilities, from government medical experiments."
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