THE OFFICIAL NOVELIZATION TO THE MOTION PICTURE “GHOST IN THE SHELL” FROM PARAMOUNT PICTURES, DREAMWORKS PICTURES AND RELIANCE ENTERTAINMENT.
Based on the internationally-acclaimed sci-fi property, “GHOST IN THE SHELL” follows the Major, a special ops one-of-a-kind human-cyborg hybrid, who leads the elite task force Section 9. Devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, Section 9 is faced with an enemy whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka Robotic’s advancements in cyber technology.
Co-written with Abbie Bernstein.
AUTHOR’S NOTES:
This project had an eventful road to publication; originally Titan Books announced that they would be publishing a novelization of the live-action Ghost in the Shell movie, written by me, for release in April of 2017, but issues with the licensor meant that we couldn’t deliver a book that accurately reflected the finished movie in time to hit stores alongside the film’s initial release. The script I was working from was changed heavily during shooting, and access to the later cuts of the film was restricted, making it difficult at the time to revise the novel to come in line with the movie.
For a while, it looked like the book might get cancelled entirely, and planned French-language, Japanese-language and audiobook editions were dropped from the production schedule. But rather than pull the project, Titan decided to go forward with a later publication date in September 2017, to coincide with the movie’s Blu-Ray release. It’s not uncommon for the wildly differing schedules and needs of book publishing and movie making to act at cross purposes to one another, and sometimes things don’t work out – but we got a second bite at the cyber-cherry here.
Speaking personally, I wanted to be a part of this project because I have been a fan of Ghost in the Shell creator Masamune Shirow’s manga and anime work for a very long time, and I took on the job specifically because it’s a world I’ve always wanted to tell a story in. I would have loved to write something that more closely connected the source material to the feature film – and in fact I did work in a lot of incidental references to the original Ghost in the Shell stories, Stand Alone Complex series and the like – but those were deleted when the licensor opted for a work that mirrored the movie as closely as possible. Unfortunately, my writing schedule meant that I couldn’t come back to work on the revisions for the major (no pun intended) rewrites for the final draft of the novelization as published, and I have the hardworking and super-talented Abbie Bernstein to thank for taking over at the eleventh hour to see it to the finish line.
MOVIE TRAILER
