DreamWorks has acquired the rights to Masamune Shirow’s popular manga series Ghost in the Shell, with plans to develop the sci-fi thriller as a 3-D live-action movie.
The series, first published in 1989, focuses on a cyborg member of a covert unit of Japanese National Public Safety Commission who hunts cyber-criminals. The manga spawned two additional series, three anime movie adaptations, and an animated TV series.
Dark Horse has released all three manga series in North America: Ghost in the Shell, Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface, and Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor.
Former Marvel Studios head Avi Arad, Ari Arad and Steven Paul of Seaside Entertainment will produce the film. Jamie Moss (Street Kings) will write the adaptation.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:02 am
3D as in bullets flying at you when you’re wearing special glasses? Or was this just another way of saying that it’s going to be live-action instead of animation?
April 15th, 2008 at 6:32 am
I really don’t like the thought of this. I realise it is very early to be shooting down the thought of GitS as a “3-D live action movie” (whatever that actually means), but it just does not sit well with me.
What irks me the most is the description that the movies will be based heavily on the original Masamune Shirow mangas. I will confess I have never been a fan of the manga form, and I’m not a particularly big fan of anime in general (I find it’s conformity to tired cliches a bit too grating for my taste), however I love the Ghost in the Shell movies and the Stand Alone Complex TV show, both of which are a shining example of what this art form can do when it’s approached in a mature, adult fashion.
However, from the little time I spent reading the original Shirow works, the books are similar yet far different from the adaptation made by Mamoru Oshii. I felt his efforts added a more mature (possibly western?) stability to the story that the manga sorely lacked. While the crux of the story is very much in the manga, the anime really conveyed a more sophisticated approach to it all. I hope whoever is in real control of it at Dreamworks has at least watched the animated movies. That way it may actually be somewhat entertaining, instead of being reduced to some Matrix-esque drivel.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:17 am
i swear to god, if they cast milla jovovich in this and it’s directed by w.s. anderson i’m going to punch the internet
April 15th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Saw this one coming a LONG time ago…
I’m sure they’re thinking of Angelina Jolie as Major Kusanagi.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:37 am
something like beowulf?
April 15th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Can’t we just stick with Stand Alone Complex, please? That series is perfect.
Frankly, I think this will go the same way as the Evangelion film they’ve had greenlit for years.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:56 am
I hope they release a season 3 of S.A.C.
Russell Crowe has to be Batou
April 15th, 2008 at 9:21 am
SWEET, because Street Kings was SO well-written!
April 15th, 2008 at 9:34 am
KEEP PEOPLE WHO DID VEXILLE OUT OF THIS!
April 15th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I would think 3D means what the 3D Superman Returns movie was like in the Imax.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Do you people truly not know what “3-d live action” means? Well, you will find out soon enough, I suppose. Most of the major studios are eyeing 3-d as a technology that will get people off their couches and into theaters — at higher ticket prices, of course. Expect a spate of 3-d movies, both animated and live-action, in the next few years.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:03 am
And it will be PG-13. No realistic violence at all. It’s going to be dumbed down to death.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Hopefully it’s just normal live action. Beowolf, while a great film, looked cheesy. The computer generated effect they used in that is 5 years too early. It was a huge distraction for me and the only things that looked good were the non-human ones, like hte dragon.
Considering how much the Matrix borrowed from GitS, not in story, but style and setting, I’m not sure this will have the impact the manga or anime had all those years ago. Still would be great to see, but I forsee a $100 million budget at best and a Ultra Violet-like crapshoot.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Good or bad, it’s just another pointless remake, and shows a woeful lack of ideas or desire to take a “risk” on anything new.
If the studio believes in GITS so much, they should re-release the original anime to cinemas, with suitable promotion. I’m sure the marketing droids will fuss about it having subtitles & not having an American “star name”, but maybe it’s time the film studios paid a little less attention to salesmen.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Kirk, Beowulf was motion capture. This is live action. I don’t really see how this is hard to understand.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Rob, this isn’t a remake. It’s a re-adaptation of the comic book. There’s a BIG difference. Oshii’s movie was something different from the comic, the TV series was different from both.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Personally, I’m not sure I want to have Dreamworks handling this. They were the ones who botched the DVD release of the GITS: Innocence, and I agree with the idea that re-releasing the Oshii movies with better promotion and restored animation would be a better venture than creating something that no current top American actress could pull off as Major Kusanagi.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I find the term “3-D live action” is a alittle vague. I think what they mean is live-action actors shot alongside heavy CGI elements like 300, Sin City, and Sky Captain. With that in mind GitS would make a good fit.
Promotion is not pixie dust. The way the western market works is that if spend time re-making an animated film, distributing it, and then at the end of the day it has neither name-value or star appeal then you’ve just burned a pile of cash. Add that it tackles mature subjects, daresay the most mature subject of all, and then has a chick that runs around in the nip and you got yourself one empty theater.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
If they make a live-action version set in a futuristic Hong Kong, with Japanese characters - then awesome. If it’s warped to fit an American perspective with white characters - ugh. Why? Because I like the idea of having different stories from different perspectives. I like watching an American gore movie and then a Japanese ghost movie and then a European thriller. I’m sick of this insistence by American studios that every good idea has to be retold with a white American perspective, which makes it easier for American audience to keep their sensibilities narrow. And GITS has a distinctive Japanese perspective.
The only way I could get behind a white-American version is if they set it in the “American Empire,” which is what America has transformed into in the actual GITS series, with a new set of characters running parallel to the Japanese events.
April 15th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
They really can’t adapt any of Shirow’s original work too closely, otherwise the movie would be full of 10 minute sequences of talking heads spouting incomprehensible technobabble.
Let’s face it, some of the sequences in the original manga would make the Architect scene from The Matrix Reloaded seem like watching The Transporter.
April 15th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
When they say “live action 3-d” they mean live actors filmed with a 3-d camera. Think “Captain Eo” or “Jaws 3″ not “Sky Captain” or “Beowulf.” i don’t understand why this is confusing.
Wired’s article on the burgeoning trend:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2008/04/3d_movies
April 16th, 2008 at 4:27 am
look “3D live action” means with real live humans instead of animation but but a 3d live action GitS will probably be dolled up with lots of comuter generated special effects….why do they have to go murder a great anime …anime is anime because it does things live action cant do!!!!!!
April 16th, 2008 at 4:28 am
look “3D live action” means with real live humans instead of animation but but a 3d live action GitS will probably be dolled up with lots of comuter generated special effects….why do they have to go murder a great anime …anime is anime because it does things live action cant do!!!!!!
April 16th, 2008 at 8:56 am
maybe it will be like 300 / Sin city? real actors infront of blue/green screens and backdrops added later digitally?
that could work in theory.
April 16th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
It should be R-18 and ultra violent.