Shelling Out Dept.

From the current AICN Anime report...

Hollywood Ghost in the Shell screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis has stated during a Shutter Island q & a that she plans to "turn in a draft in a few weeks." She expressed cautious optimism about the project, and indirectly noted an obstacle such a project faces in Hollywood: "Cross your fingers, guys — [it has a] female lead."

Kalogridis was once hired by Avatar director James Cameron to script his planned adaptation of Yukito Kishiro's Battle Angel Alita (GUNNM) manga. When asked about the possibilities of the Battle Angel film or an Avatar sequel, she responded, "You have to ask Jim — anything to do with [those projects]."

GitS has, like most any anime-themed live-action production, so many strikes against it out of the box that I fear for anything coherent or worthwhile coming of it. The fact that it has a female lead bulks extremely tiny next to its convoluted (shilling for contorted) storyline, its cerebral themes (which even in this post-Matrix era are going to be hard to present without tons of dumbing-down), and the simple fact that, like Akira, they will have the worst time making it something people are going to go out of their way to watch without changing its locale, disconnecting it from its cultural wellspring, and thus destroying most of what was interesting about it to begin with.

Fingers crossed, indeed.

Also:

The first "season" of Kinutani Yu's Ghost in the Shell-Stand Alone Complex manga adaptation of the anime ended in Young Magazine # 14 (On sale March 8). The second season will begin in Gekkan Young Magazine # 05 (On sale April 14).

Wait, there was a manga adaptation of the ... ? STOP PRESS, MUST SEE.