Rupert Sanders is on board to direct. Avi Arad and Steven Paul are producing the film from a script by Bill Wheeler. Mark Sourian is exec producing.
Maybe we’ll get this before the Akira movie?
Not now that you’ve doomed it with specific production details in the the thread title! “Warner Brothers Fast Tracks Live Action AKIRA!” is how we jinxed that movie.
But optimistically, ScarJo in the Shell sounds good to me.
Well, it’s certainly much more easily translatable than Akira, and posthuman cyborg fits in with the roles Scarlett Johansson’s taken on lately, but…from the director of Snow White and the Huntsman and the producer of The Amazing Spiderman?
Snow White and the Huntsman was a pretty good movie, lead actress aside.
Agreed!
Live action GITS…oh man. So much potential…so many ways it could fail badly. Scarlett as a lead is a good start, though.
Does ScarJo have a clause in her agency contract saying she will only play roles where she is almost, but not quite, human?
You will have to ask her agent, Skynet
i wonder if the director will cheat on his wife with his leading lady again?
I’m sure he has his fingers crossed.
I don’t think ScarJo is quite as desperate.
This will certainly be an atrocity of a movie. Just the fact the setting will be America is enough to doom it, but really any Hollywood involvement at all, even with a faithful adaptation, would be bad.
Of course it will be. Major Kusanagi has already been turned into ScarJo. I’m sure Section 9 will be turned into some sort of international team comprising largely of caucasian Americans.
Still going to watch it though!
That director… meh.
Oh hey, another movie about Asian people starring white people!
I think this one isn’t even about Asian people at all. I doubt it will have any trace of the Japanese setting.
I honestly don’t know why films like Ghost in the Shell and Akira have such a following. I’ve seen them both, and I only vaguely remember what they were about. This despite the fact I’m very into genre fiction. Neither struck me as being particularly intelligent or imaginative. Akira in particular is practically a Giant Monster movie, though slightly more nuanced since the protagonist becomes the giant monster.
Personally I think the GitS TV series is much better than the movies, though I like the movies well enough. Akira is probably as highly regarded as it is a) because of the manga (which has a lot more room to flesh out the characters and narrative), and b) because it was (one of) the first anime films to go huge in the West. Certainly in the UK. Arguably it doesn’t hold up very well compared to a lot of the stuff which has followed in its wake (though it is still very good as 80s nostalgia).
Also, what’s wrong with giant monster movies? People love giant monster movies.
Stupidity. That’s what’s wrong with giant monster movies. Most of them are exceedingly idiotic and arbitrary. Inframan grows to 12 stories tall “just because,” and then doesn’t stay giant sized later even though being giant sized would solve all his problems. I’m not 10 years old anymore, Godzilla isn’t my hero. I mean, he was, who else was going to save the earth from the Smog Monster, but they doesn’t mean I think those are great films as an adult.
Akira’s kind of like that. It’s a bit better, but mostly it’s just an excuse for action sequences where they try to kill Tetsuo repeatedly and fail because he’s a giant monster, and the Japanese Army’s plan to kill the giant monster never works.
It isn’t like it’s a historical setting movie where changing the race would be super weird. The story can work in any scifi city in the developed world.