Scarlett Johansson Offered Ghost in the Shell! SILAS LESNICK

[frigidmagi]

Superherohype

Although The Wolf of Wall Street‘s Margot Robbie was said to be up for the role earlier this year, Deadline is now reporting that Lucy and Marvel’s The Avengers‘s Scarlett Johansson has been offered the leading role in DreamWorks’ live-action adaptation of the popular manga Ghost in the Shell. Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders will helm the feature from a script by William Wheeler, based on the series by Masamune Shirow.

Produced by Avi Arad, Ari Arad and Steven Paul and with the backing of Steven Spielberg, the rights to Shirow’s original 1989 complex futuristic thriller, about the members of a covert ops unit that takes on technology-related crime, were picked up several years ago with plans to use the latest 3D technology to film it. In Japan, the huge success of the comics led to a number of anime film adaptations, a TV series and a series of video games with DreamWorks releasing the second anime film in North America.

It remains to be seen whether or not Johansson will take the part, although Robbie is now said to be out of the running altogether, instead targeting a role in director David Ayer’s upcoming DC Comics adaptation, Suicide Squad.

Johansson, who also starred this year in Under the Skin and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, will soon be reprising her Marvel Cinematic Universe role in next summer’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.

While I don't feel all that butthurt about it... I do kinda wish they had offered the role to an Asian. Look Hollywood, you don't stick white people in the movie for me to be interested. Alright? I mean I got a whole rant on the Forbidden Kingdom and how much cooler it would have been without the white kid. Hotfoot and CT can attest to that.

That said, I'm not gonna get as uptight about it as I did with Last Airbender... Although, I will never apologize for all the mean things I said about that movie, it deserved worst! Fuck that movie!

[rhoenix]

I think it's precisely because of the Last Airbender movie that people are more sensitive to such things when they happen. When I first read the news, my first reaction was not a positive one. "Oh hey, as a nation built on immigrants, you have to pick an actress best known for being a white woman with red or blonde hair instead of someone who even passingly looks Japanese?"

Eh, we'll see. I liked the first Ghost in the Shell movie, but I haven't read any of the comic books or seen any of the other shows. I'll wait to see what happens with this. It could end up being a pleasant surprise... or it could be yet another example of "good idea, terrible execution."

[Lys]

You have no excuse for not reading the original manga. So ahead and do so! It's very good. Aside from getting an expanded plot with a few neat side stories, you might find interesting how the characterization of the various characters, particularly the Major and Batou, changes between the movie and manga.

[Cynical Cat]

You have no excuse for not reading the original manga. So ahead and do so! It's very good. Aside from getting an expanded plot with a few neat side stories, you might find interesting how the characterization of the various characters, particularly the Major and Batou, changes between the movie and manga.

I have every excuse for not reading the original manga, starting with the fact that it has the major prostitute herself as a side job. Fuck that bullshit.

[Lys]

That is not what's going on at the start of Chapter 3. The two girls she's with in that scene are clearly her friends, and they're just using a VR rig to enjoying her time off. Well, that and apparently using the Major's milspec micromachines to calibrate their own knockoffs of the same so they can corner the high end prosthetic body market. They discuss it with her in detail at the start of Chapter 4. In the back of the manga the author notes that while it's clear they're manufacturing extremely high precision products, there's no way to establish that they used restricted military micromachines to do it, so they have no chance of being caught.

Also, you know the naked invisibility suit the Major wears in the movie? In the manga it's full body armour. In fact, in the manga the Major always wears sensible clothes or the same kind of armour the rest of her team wears. There's no catsuits or slutty one-piece with jacket or anything of the sort, putting the manga ahead of the movie and series in that respect. Really, my only problem is that I wanted to see her boyfriend naked and he's always covered up with a blanket. Damn you Shirow, show me the beefcake!