Scarlett Johansson is rapidly becoming Hollywood’s go-to actress for badass action roles. In addition to showing the boys how it’s done as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow in the MCU, she made some waves in Luc Besson’s Lucy, and quietly destroyed men’s souls in Under the Skin. According to Variety, Johansson has now signed on to appear in DreamWorks’ adaptation of the anime film Ghost in the Shell.
Ghost in the Shell is one of those anime classics, based on a manga of the same name. The story follows Motoko Kusanaigi and fellow security agency members as they try to hunt down a hacker called the Puppet Master. The films takes many fascinating twists and turns, creating a complex tapestry that encompasses the themes of sexual and social identities in a technology-driven world. The original 1995 film was groundbreaking and just a little prescient, so it will be interesting to see how a live-action, post-millennium version stacks up.
Johansson has been circling the Ghost in the Shell adaptation for awhile now, but only just agreed to star. Rupert Sanders is currently attached to direct, from a script by Bill Wheeler. There’s no word yet on how the story will be changed – the original was set in Japan, after all, and with Johansson now set to star we can expect that the location at least will be altered. DreamWorks’ principal Steven Spielberg is a big fan of the original film, though, so we can hope that the remake/adaptation will remain true to its origins.
We will get to see Johansson back in badass mode for Avengers: Age of Ultron, after which she’s set to pop up in the Coens’ new film Hail, Caesar!. We can expect Ghost in the Shell sometime after that.