He’ll be seen battling zombies next year, but if he ends up making a new deal, he’ll be the big threat. Sam Riley is in talks to co-star in Ghost In The Shell alongside Scarlett Johansson.
Rupert Sanders is directing the sci-fi action thriller for DreamWorks, which adapts Masamune Shirow’s original 1989 manga (for lots more on the complete history of Ghost In The Shell, head here). Johansson is starring as a female special ops cyborg at the head of an elite task force known as Section 9. The team, working for Hanka Robotics, is in charge of stopping dangerous criminals and extremists, and their prime target is The Laughing Man, a terrorist dedicated to wiping out all of Hanka’s cyber technology. As you could surmise, Riley is considering playing The Laughing Man, but no solid deal is in place just yet.
So far, the only confirmed piece of casting besides Johansson is Pilou Asbæk, playing Batou, the second best fighter in the section and her trusted lieutenant.
Riley, as mentioned above, will next be seen as scowling warrior against the “sorry stricken” Mr. Darcy in Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, landing February 12. He’s part of the cast for Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire and is attached to appear in BBC alt-history miniseries SS-GB, which follows a police investigation into a murder in German-occupied Britain during World War II. Ghost In The Shell currently has a March 31, 2017 release date here.