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.
