Micheal Pitt Cast as the Villain Laughing Man in GHOST IN THE SHELL
Micheal Pitt, who is best known for his gangster role in HBO's Boardwalk Empire, has been cast in the role of the main villain in director Rupert Sanders' live-action adaptation of the Japanese manga Ghost in the Shell.
Pitt will join Scarlett Johansson, who is playing the lead character, who is a special-ops cyborg. She is part of a specialized task force named Section 9 that deals with the most dangerous criminals and extremists involved with technology-related crime.
Pitt will play the main villain in the story, who is known as the Laughing Man. He is "a bitter and vengeful man with a 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."
"In the Ghost in the Shell series, Laughing Man proves to be the ultimate hacker, capable of such feats as hijacking multiple video streams simultaneously, taking over someone’s cybernetic brain entirely, or even editing his own images out of someone’s cybernetic eyes, and all in real time."
The character's name is taken from the title of J. D. Salinger's short story "The Laughing Man." His logo is an animated image of a smiling figure wearing a cap, with circling text quoting a line from Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, which reads "I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."
After being in and out of development over the past seven years or so, Sanders is prepping to start shooting in late February start in New Zealand from a script written by Jonathan Herman.
Pitt is an incredibly talented actor, and he's going to be great in this role. A couple years ago he starred in a great movie called I Origins that you should definitely check out if you haven't already. What do you think about Pitt in the role of Laughing Man?
Source: THR