WIRE Buzz: New Akira anime adaptation; Joss Whedon's next project shooting; more

In this special, super-sized, and post-Fourth of July WIRE Buzz, we've got all of the latest genre developments in one nifty little roundup. We start in the realm of dystopian anime before heading back to Victorian England and the biting wilds of Transylvania. Then we cap things off with some killer plastic surgery.

Katsuhiro Otomo is reportedly working on a brand-new anime adaptation of his seminal Japanese manga and film, Akira, writes Entertainment Weekly. This development was revealed during the Sunrise Inc. panel at Anime Expo in Los Angeles Thursday evening. While not a lot of details were divulged, it is known that this Akira project won't be a reboot; instead it will build on what's come before.

Originally published between 1982 and 1990, the manga was turned into a movie in 1988, telling the story of bikers and psychics in a dystopian version of Tokyo in 2019.

Blu-ray and 4K ultra-HD Blu-ray versions of the iconic film, which inspired an entire generation of writers, directors, and other creatives, go on sale next April. Based on the trailer below, it is unclear whether the April re-release is only in Japan or if it will also go on sale the United States around that time as well.

Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi is also busy developing a live-action film adaptation for Warner Bros. Pictures, which rides into theaters May 21, 2021.

Yesterday, Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, The Avengers) confirmed that his HBO sci-fi series, The Nevers, has kicked off principal photography. In April of this year, Casey Bloys (the network's head of programming) revealed that production would begin in London.

"There’s a lot of self-important, childish BULLSH** in this industry. But today we started principal photography on The Nevers, despite all of mine," wrote the writer/director in a Twitter post on the Fourth of July.

Set during England's Victorian era in the latter part of the 19th century, the show follows a group of women with otherworldly powers who come together to try and save the world. One of those characters is Amalia True (Outlander's Laura Donnelly).

“They themselves are not called that in the show,” said Whedon last summer. “It’s a phrase that’s meant to evoke a sort of reaction to their oddity, to what is considered unnatural. The idea that you should never be like this, you should never have existed. Something is not the way it should be, and you don’t have the right to have whatever weird power or ability … that you have.”

Written by Whedon, The Nevers received a straight-to-series order from HBO last July.

Today, the BBC One Twitter account gave vampire fans their first blood-soaked look at Claes Bang (The Square, The Bridge) as the famous fanged count in the limited Dracula series. The project is a co-production between Netflix and the BBC.

Based on Bram Stoker's influential and epistolary horror novel, the show co-stars Lyndsey Marshal (The League of Gentlemen), Chanel Cresswell (The Bay), Matthew Beard (The Imitation Game), Lydia West (Years & Years), Paul Brennen (Happy Valley), Sarah Niles (Catastrophe), Sofia Oxenham (Grantchester), John McCrea (God’s Own Country), Phil Dunster (Save Me), Millicent Wong, John Heffernan, Joanna Scanlan, Dolly Wells, Sacha Dhawan, Jonathan Aris, Morfydd Clark, and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett.

The batty miniseries was penned by Doctor Who and Sherlock alums Mark Gattis and Steven Moffat. Production began on the three 90-minute episodes over the spring.

Feeling hungry?

We've got the first foaming-at-the-mouth trailer for Sylvia and Jen Soska's remake of David Cronenberg's Rabid. Laura Vandervoort leads the reimagining as Rose, a woman who acquires a taste for human blood after a terrible accident forces her to re-grow her face via experimental stem cells. As her hunger grows, Rose infects more and more people, turning them into mindless and violent zombie-like beings.

Released in 1977, the original movie (written and directed by Cronenberg) starred Marilyn Chambers, Frank Moore, Joe Silver, Howard Ryshpan, Patricia Gage, and Susan Roman.

There's no word on the U.S. release of the film, but according to IMDb, Rabid will arrive on home video in the U.K. on January 1, 2020.