It was revealed early last year that Avengers: Age of Ultron’s Scarlett Johansson had landed the lead role in the live-action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, and we now know that Boardwalk Empire and Hannibal star Michael Pitt will join her in the movie as its lead villain.
Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) is directing this Ghost in the Shell, and shooting starts next month in New Zealand. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Pitt will be playing the Laughing Man, a character from the popular manga series who “is a bitter and vengeful man with a body that is part robot.” Apparently, “He has a unique sense of style and has been described as a bad guy filtered through the lens of a street artist.”
The movie has been in the works for a while now, and Ghost in the Shell follows a member of a covert ops unit of the Japanese National Public Safety Commission that specializes in fighting technology-related crime. Johansson meanwhile is a special ops cyborg in a task force named Section 9 that deals in the most dangerous criminals and extremists.
With a release date of March 31st, 2017, it’s about time that the cast of Ghost in the Shell starts coming together, and Hannibal proved that Pitt knows how to play a great bad guy!
