Helena Bonham Carter Not Sure About Akira; Calls Dark Shadows "Impossible to Sell"
Posted 12.05.11 by Ryan
Now that Warner Bros. has finally greenlit the live-action adaptation of Akira, based on Katsuhiro Otomo's classic manga ("comic book") series, casting has been the primary focus. Garrett Hedlund is set to play the lead role of Kaneda, but the rest of the cast is uncertain.
At the end of October, Helena Bonham Carter was offered the role of Lady Miyako, a character that becomes an important ally of Kaneda's and has even bigger hair than Bonham Carter's Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. However, Bonham Carter told MTV that she hasn't accepted the role yet. "I have read the script and I haven't really decided yet," Bonham Carter revealed at the Britannia Awards. "I don't know yet what I'm going to do next."
Bonham Carter refused to say more about the movie, but was more willing to discuss the upcoming adaptation of Dark Shadows, directed by her off-screen partner Tim Burton. The actress says that the movie, based on a 1970s and 80s soap opera, was a labor of love for Burton.
This is a thing he raced home to see when he was about age 10, so it's returning to his childhood roots of what he loved watching. It's actually a really bad, hilariously bad soap opera, and because it's so bad, he felt he had to make a hugely expensive movie.
Warners may have spent a penny or two on Dark Shadows, but Bonham Carter says the studio's marketing department will have a tough time selling the movie to the public, calling it "uncategorizable"
It's going to be unlike [anything], I think. It's dangerous to say that. But it's very original and it's kind of uncategorizable. It's going to be impossible to sell, frankly, because it's just so ... it's a soap opera, but it's very, very subtle. I don't know. We'll see. It's a ghost story, but then it's an unhappy vampire story, it's a mixture of so many different things and a real ensemble piece. Hopefully it will be funny. I don't know.
We have a feeling it won't be too difficult to market Dark Shadows, since it does star a slightly well-known actor named Johnny Depp in the lead role.
Next Showing: Dark Shadows opens May 11