As Hollywood starts to become less and less original, they've started to tap into pre-existing IPs to draw their inspiration and based their movies around. We've already seen this happen with comic-book movies, with YA novels, and we've also been seeing it with anime and manga, whether people realize it or not.
A still from the upcoming 'All You Need Is Kill'
We've seen Avatar: The Last Airbender, of course, even though it didn't do well at the box office. However, there are less obvious inspirations for Hollywood films, where the comparisons drawn would be in the style and the plot rather than the entire film. We have 9 Brave Raideen, which unconsciously served as the precursor to Transformers.
Studio Ghibli has a whole host of films which have been used as creative inspiration for Hollywood films, particularly in Pixar. Films such as My Neighbour Tortoro was a huge influence on these animated films, and Tortoro even made a cameo appearance in Toy Story 3. George Lucas has also revealed that he used anime and manga when coming up with his own ideas for Star Wars.
Battle Angel: Alita is a film that's currently in development with James Cameron
Akira is another huge, huge inspiration, and Hollywood is even attempting to make it into a movie as we speak. Warner Brothers had already put it through development and casting before they got cold feet and stalled the project in development. Akira's been an influence on films such as Dark City and Chronicle.
There's also Paprika, which was said to be one of the primary influences on Chris Nolan's Inception. James Cameron's also admitted to being a huge fan of Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind, and he drew inspiration when from it when making Avatar. Although he's not directly involved in making that into a film, he is in development of another film based on anime called 'Battle Angel: Alita'. That film has been in development for more than a couple of years, and we really don't know when Cameron would go through with it, if he does at all.
One of the most famous movies of our time, The Matrix, was also influenced by the cyber punk aesthetic of anime Ghost in a Shell. And of course, we have Dragon Ball Z. While various live action films have tried to translate the success of Dragon Ball Z, they've so far had no luck. Instead of going for the big names, even though WB is still trying with Akira, companies seem to be going for the smaller IPs such as Battle Angel: Alita and another one called All You Need Is Kill. It's a less risky endeavor for them, and could potentially yield in the same type of profits.
Akira is still in development after losing its director
