Dreamworks and Paramount Pictures‘ Ghost in the Shell project has just gotten their villain; with Sam Riley (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) to play the main baddie.
Riley will be joining Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers, Lucy, Lost in Translation) and Pilou Asbæk (Lucy). They will be portraying Major Makoto and Batou respectively.
Riley himself will be cast as The Laughing Man, the ultimate hacker who is also one of the main villains in the anime series for Ghost in the Shell.
The film is currently being developed by Dreamworks and Paramount, and this is the movie as described:
Ghost in the Shell follows a female special ops cyborg who leads an elite task force called Section 9 for Hanka Robotics. Section 9 is devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, led by The Laughing Man whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka’s advancements in cyber technology.
Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) will be directing the film, while Jonathan Herman (Straight Outta Compton) is reworking the scripts originally produced by William Wheeler (Hoax, The Reluctant Fundamentalist) and Jamie Moss (Street Kings).
The film is expected to open 31 March 2017, with filming to begin in Wellington New Zealand, January 2016.
