Star Trek actor George Takei, has taken a stand against the practice of casting Causasian actors on live action adaptations of popular novels, manga and anime series, especially on the upcoming Akira live action movie.
Takei, an American actor with Japanese decent, has publicly asked Warner Brothers execs to re-consider before any official decisions are made. In the film industry, it's become pretty much common practice for big-screen adaptations to be what's known as "whitewashed," which means the studios casting white actors in roles that are meant for other ethnicities!
Here's an excerpt from the said interview courtesy of The Advocate:
Why do you think there seems to be a reluctance to cast Asian-American actors in leading roles?I don’t think it’s a reluctance, they just don’t know better. They have the experience of Shyamalan’s project, and I would think any savvy production company would learn from that. So I’m really baffled by the lack of learning from experience. Hollywood doesn’t like failures, and there’s a string of failures in the past. With this effort, I’m trying to warn them of what is likely to happen with this Akira project.What would you ideally like to see happen with the Akira adaptation?Well, ideally, they should do it properly and get Asian-American actors cast in those roles. In the adaptation they would of course be speaking in English and understandable to a popular American audience. That’s the whole point. They bought a project that is popular and enormously loved by its fans, and if they want the fan following to support the film, that’s the way you do it.
It has been rumored before that the scripts for Tetsuo, a guy who was abducted by the government due to a research, were sent to Robert Pattinson (which he later cleared up), Andrew Garfield (The Amazing Spider-Man 2012) and James McAvoy (X-Men: First Class), while the scripts for the bike gang leader Kaneda, were send to Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy), Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class), Chris Pine (Star Trek), Justin Timberlake (The Social Network) and Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line).
The story of of the original Akira anime film takes place in the rebuilt Neo Tokyo where a leader of a biker gang saves his friend from a medical experiment. Akira has been one of Warner Bros' high priority projects since the studio with Legendary Pictures acquired it for a 7-figure sum 2 years ago from manga publisher Kodansha. The intention has been to make 2 films, each covering 3 books in the series.
Source: JEFusion