Eclectic actor Michael Pitt
has joined Rupert Sander's upcoming big screen take on Masamune Shirow's iconic sci-fi manga, Ghost in the Shell.
The Boardwalk
Empire star will play the antagonist to Scarlett
Johansson's hero in the film. Known
as The Laughing Man, the villain is a "bitter and vengeful man with body
that is part robot. He has a unique sense of style and has been described as a
bad guy filtered through the lens of a street artist."
The Laughing
Man isn't the iconic villain from the late '80s early '90s manga and mid-90s
movie (that one was called The Puppet Master), but rather a villain from the
2000s anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
The character
is a cyber-terrorist (this is Ghost in the Shell after all), with an obsession
with J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. In fact, his name, The Laughing Man, was taken from a short story of the same name Salinger published in 1949 on The New Yorker.
In the
upcoming film, Johansson plays Major
Motoko Kusanagi, the squad leader of an intelligence organization
called Public Security Section 9, which deals in cyber-terrorism and
cyber-warfare, and that is tasked with
The Laughing Man case. It's members are among the best
in the country (Japan), and they are allowed to act with little to no
governmental oversight.
Pilou Asbæk who worked with
Johansson on Luc Besson's Lucy will play Batou, the team's heavy hitter. Maleficent's
actor Sam Riley was reported to be in talks to play The Laughing Man, but now
that Pitt got the role, it's unclear if the negotiations broke down or if he is
actually up for another role.
Ghost in the
Shell is expected to go into production later this month in New Zealand for a
March 31, 2017 release.
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