The movie was rumored to take the six-book original series by Katsuhiro Otomo and translate it into two feature films. Ruairi Robinson was attached to direct the project.

Bloody Disgusting is now reporting that the film is dead in the water.

Sad news comes in this weekend as we have learned that not only has Robinson left the project, but Tetsuo and Kaneda's adventure is "dead as a doornail," a report we've confirmed with two separate sources.

You guys speculated that the project sounded rushed, and that such an undertaking probably couldn't be done, in a manner worthy to the series in time, for a 2010 release. So maybe it's all for the best, and maybe this it will have another life in the future — the far future where there are psychics, sex slaves, floating chairs, and we live in a Neo-City.

Akira debuted as a manga strip twenty-six years ago, running for eight years in the Japanese magazine Young (It's been reprinted twice in the US, by Marvel Comics in the '90s, and Dark Horse in the beginning of this decade). The plot centers around Shotaro Kaneda, leader of motorcycle gang The Capsules, his psychic one-time best friend and now enemy, Tetsuo Shima, and eponymous character Akira, a cryogenically-frozen child whose destruction of Tokyo decades earlier started World War III and precipitated the creation of the hypermodern metropolis Neo-Tokyo. Add in secret military organizations, terrorists and corrupt government figures and you have the kind of sprawling epic that Warner Bros is undoubtedly hoping will capture the hearts and minds of the public in an almost Matrix-like fashion next year.

For the manga snobs amongst us, there'll always be the animated movie.

WB takes franchise turn with 'Akira' [Variety]