Film by Rupert Sanders
Ghost in the Shell is a 2017 cyberpunk action film directed by Rupert Sanders and written by Jamie Moss, William Wheeler, and Ehren Kruger. It is the first live-action movie based on the Japanese Ghost in the Shell franchise envisioned by Masamune Shirow, and stars Scarlett Johansson, Takeshi Kitano, Michael Pitt, Pilou Asbæk, Chin Han, and Juliette Binoche. Set in a near future when the line between humans and robots is blurring, the story follows Major Mira Killian (Johansson), a cyborg supersoldier who investigates her past.
Filming for Ghost in the Shell took place in New Zealand at Stone Street Studios from February to June 2016, with additional filming in Hong Kong that June. The film premiered in Tokyo on March 16, 2017, and was released in the United States on March 31, 2017, in IMAX, 3D, IMAX 3D, and 4DX. It grossed $376.6 million worldwide against a production budget of $110 million. Ghost in the Shell received mixed reviews, with praise for its cast performances, visual style, action sequences, cinematography and musical score, but criticism for its plot and lack of character development. The casting of non-Asian actors (particularly Johansson in the lead role) drew accusations of racism and whitewashing in the United States, although Mamoru Oshii, the director of the original anime, stated that there was no basis for this accusation.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.