Rupert Sanders to Direct Live-Action GitS

Dreamworks has drafted Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders to helm the Hollywood live-action Ghost in the Shell feature film from a screenplay by Reluctant Fundamentalist screenwriter William Wheeler. Dreamworks acquired the adaptation rights to Masamune Shirow’s modern classic cyberpunk manga in 2008.

I’m not trying to elevate the Ghost in the Shell franchise to an unrealistic idolized pedestal, but realistically especially the two movies really do sit near the peak of intellectual artistry within the anime genre and even the motion picture medium itself. Particularly Ghost in the Shell and Innocence are striking looking pictures that manage to make crowded, dirty, worn-out environments seem sterile and alien. I’m not convinced that any Hollywood movie has ever exactly emulated that specific aesthetic. Moreover, the GitS franchise – the anime moreso than the manga, granted – is heady; it’s awash in the sort of contemplative philosophy that makes films like Waking Life and Cosmopolis critical targets. Even when the Ghost in the Shell franchise is more pretentious and convoluted than legitimately “smart,” such as the current Arise OVA series, or more action-oriented than philosophical, as in “stand-alone” episodes of the two TV series, the franchise is still academic enough to necessitate that viewers pay close attention and follow multiple plot threads and make their own deductive connections. A “Ghost in the Shell” that isn’t perplexing and complicated just isn’t Ghost in the Shell, as far as I’m concerned; it would instead be Alice in Cyberland, Armitage the III, Mardock Scramble, Bubblegum Crisis, or Accel World. In respect to this observation, I can’t envision an American produced live-action Ghost in the Shell. Perhaps the closest Hollywood has ever come was the critically panned Johnny Mnemonic, which was, granted, a bad film, but one that tried to revolve around genuine cyberpunk ideas. Films like Sin City and 300 have demonstrated that a highly stylized live-action GitS could be possible on a feasible production budget, but the bigger obstacle is whether an American audience is actually interested in watching a sci-fi action movie that questions whether it’s intelligence, self-autonomy, or religious perception that define humanity as a backdrop for a conflict about political perception of arms dealing, geopolitical espionage, or distribution of civil wealth. When Ghost in the Shell gets dumbed down, it’s not really Ghost in the Shell anymore. When it’s at its typical plateau of academic complexity, Ghost in the Shell is too complicated, too abstract, too confusing, and, bluntly, too intelligent for at least 90% of the typical Hollywood movie audience. My skepticism is precise. I’m not doubting that Hollywood has the capacity to produce a (good) live-action GitS movie. Rather, I just suspect that this project will end up going the way of the live-action Akira and Cowboy Bebop and never actually get produced because producers will eventually realize that it’s just not marketable to mainstream American audiences.

Source: Deadline