Michael Pitt Joins 'Ghost in the Shell' Live Action Cast as Laughing Man

Months after Scarlett Johansson was announced as the lead of the cast the 2017 live-action adaptation of classic anime Ghost in the Shell, Motoko Kusanagi has found her match. Funny Games actor Michael Pitt will play the film's villain, the Laughing Man; who is a part-robot character obsessed with Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Pitt has been picked to play the villain from the iconic anime, a character that has been described as "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."

Slash Film reports that Pitt's character also "has a thing" for Salinger and is named after one of the author's short stories. For further creepy details about what the Laughing Man does, he hides his face from digital images and replaces it with a quote from Catcher in the Rye.

Pitt joins the cast alongside Johansson and Danish actor Pilou Asbæk, who played Paolo Orsini in The Borgias and is set to take on the role of Euron Greyjoy in the sixth season of HBO's epic series Game of Thrones.

Months back, there were rumors that Sam Riley had been hired to play the Laughing Man, but it seems like it was Pitt who ultimately won the role. This will be a busy year for the actor, who started on Dawson's Creek.  Between 2016 and 2017, he has four projects lined up including Criminal, co-starring Gal Gadot, Ryan Reynolds and Gary Oldman.

Ghost in the Shell will be directed by Snow White and the Huntsman filmmaker Rupert Sanders, from a screenplay by Jonatham Herman who is currently nominated for an Academy Award for his Straight Outta Compton script. The movie is set to begin production in the coming months, and has an early 2017 release date scheduled.