It's considered to be a classic and one of the earliest anime/manga titles of which western audiences would become aware. Now it looks as if a live-action version of Ghost in the Shell may have cracked a way to make it to the big screen. This week DreamWorks announced that it has a script from William Wheeler (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) and has made a deal with Rupert Sanders (director of Snow White And The Huntsman) to helm the production. Avi Arad, who made his name with various Marvel projects, will be one of the producers.
Ghost in the Shell has had a rich history since it first appeared in print in 1989. It was written and illustarted by Masamune Shirow and went on to transfer to big-sceen anime adaptations, videogames and a television series. The stories take place in the city of Niihama in mid twenty-first century Japan and feature the exploits of Major Motoko Kusanagi and a counter-cyberterrorist organisation known as Public Security Section 9. Cyber-implants are a mere formality in this future-era and some, including Kusanagi, have had almost entire transplants into cybernetic bodies that enhance their abilities but which are sometimes prone to the attacks of the savvy cyber-terrorists they chase...
Industry site Deadline notes that the live-action adaptation, championed by Steven Spielberg, has no firm schedule as yet (Sanders has other potential films which may shoot first) and it not known whether the project would shoot in the long-touted 3D format that was once being considered... but fans of the existing franchise still have the third and final chapter of the anime production Ghost in the Shell: Arise - produced by Production I.G. - that will be released in 2014.