Variety report that Laeta Kalogridis - newly hot in Hollywood after completing the script for the upcoming Martin Scorcese movie Shutter Island, but better known to us as writer and executive producer for the Bionic Woman reboot of 2007 - will replace originally-announced writer Jamie Moss on the project, which Dreamworks is now planning to make in 3D.

The movie will be produced by Avi and Ari Arad, perhaps more familiar to fans as executive producers on Marvel movies like Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Iron Man.

Kalogridis to adapt 'Ghost in the Shell' [Variety]

Futurama, "Parasites Lost"

Fry eats a dodgy egg-salad sandwich at a spaceship rest area, and the eggs hatch into tons of worms, who form a whole worm society inside Fry's bowels. So the Planet Express crew has to copy themselves into tiny little worm-sized robots, which they can control with their brains — so the robots can travel inside Fry's innards while the actual people (and robot, in Bender's case) controlling them remain safe and normal-sized.

Mobile Suit Gundam and Gundam Wing
The Wing Zero and Gundam Epyon suits included the ZERO (Zoning & Emotional Range Omitted) system, connecting to the pilot's brain via neural interface and giving the pilot real-time strategic data, and eliminating all pesky doubts. The system has one major flaw: the pilot tends to "hallucinate" the possible paths the suit can take, causing temporary insanity unless your mind is strong enough. Here's a battle between Gundam Wing Zero and Gundam Epyon.

Ghost In The Shell

Lots of people in this universe jack into android bodies and control them remotely — sending android "dolls" into danger while remaining safe. In this clip, Major Motoko Kusanagi controls two android bodies at once. Especially in "Solid State Society," she's frequently running two parallel processes, and manages to be in two places at once.

Cities In Flight by James Blish

Before humans can actually visit Jupiter in person, we send tele-operated robots with cool tentacles. Here's a relevant passage (thanks to Technovelgy):

For a wild instant he had thought there was a man on Jupiter already; but as he pulled up just above the platform's roof, he realized that the moving thing inside was - of course - a robot; a misshapen, many-tentacled thing about twice the size of a man. It was working busily with bottles and flasks, of which it seemed to have thousands on benches and shelves all around it The whole enclosure was a litter of what Helmuth took to be chemical apparatus, and off to one side was an object which might have been a microscope...

The robot looked up at him and gesticulated with two or three tentacles...

"This is Doc Barth. How do you like my laboratory?"

Bug Park by James P. Hogan

In this awesome novel, inventors Eric and Vanessa Heber develop a new kind of telepresence — direct neural coupling — which shuts down your usual senses and connects them to neural feedback from robots, known as Mecs. The novel explains:

Ohira, who had been watching phlegmatically, nodded his head at the figures in the chairs. "You see, it's the way I told you. No ordinary VR helmets here. This connects straight into your head."

"DNC: Direct Neural Coupling," Heber said to Michelle. "That's what makes Neurodyne different."

She nodded. "I have read a little about it."

"Would you like to try it?" Heber invited.

Michelle moved her gaze to the empty chairs but looked apprehensive. "I'm not sure. I wouldn't want to get one of your little guys shredded or caught up in a wringer."

So of course the Hebers, and their precocious teen son, come up with the ultimate business model — tiny little bug robots controlled by tourists' minds, which can explore an insect theme park or even take part in insect gladitorial contests. But of course, bad guys want to use the DNC technology to power miniature assassins instead.

Robot in Invincible

The leader of the Teen Team superhero group, Robot gets promoted to join the Guardians Of The Globe, who are like the Justice League in the Invincible universe. Everybody thinks he's just a regular robot, but eventually they discover he's actually remote controlled by Rudy Conners, a disfigured man living in a tank of fluid.

Battle Angel Alita

Soon to be a movie from James "Avatar" Cameron, this series follows a cyborg assassin who's controlled several different bodies, including a Berzerker body, a "motorball body" and a TUNED body. (Thanks to Cash907Censored!)

The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree, Jr.

In a corporate-controlled future, advertising is illegal, so instead celebrities go around promoting products. This story's protgagonist has her personality put into a perfect robot body, while her real body is put "in the sauna room" and she becomes an advertising celebrity. Her new body is a "placental decanter," specially grown to be perfect, with control implants. "Little Delphi is going to live a wonderful, exciting life. She's going to be a girl people watch. And she's going to be using fine products people will be glad to know about and helping the people who make them."

Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

The soldiers in this book are jacked into Soldierboys, Flyboys and other constructs, which they control with their brains. These machines allow the U.S. to run a remote-controlled war against various third-world countries. Protgaonist Julian Class controls his robot Soldierboy via a jack connected to his skull. Too bad that long-term connection to the Soldierboys and Flyboys has weird long-term effects, including "humanizing" you and making you averse to killing.

Sleep Dealer

Two different characters jack their nervous systems into robots, far away, in this incredible movie directed by Alex Rivera. Memo goes to work in the city in Mexico, where he's connected remotely to robots doing construction work in the United States — so the U.S. can import people's labor, without bringing in the people themselves. And Rudy controls a military drone with his mind — using it, among other things, to blow up Memo's family's house when Memo accidentally gets suspected of being a hacker.

Runners up: Suspended (InfoCom game), Debatable Space by Philip Palmer, City by Clifford Simak, Starstruck (comics), Neon Genesis Evangelion, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson

Thanks to Arthur Conan Smith, Kiala Kazebee, S.J. Edeards, Katrina James, Andrew Liptak, Greta Christina, Kate Dominic, Jessy Randall Carlos P. Diaz, FLIMGeeks, Espana Sheriff, Tom Marcinko, Barry Lukens, Lun Esex, Ashley Edward Miller, Allan Bostick, Jackie M, Star Killer, Jason Schachat, Bonnie Burton, Morgan Johnson, Paul McEnery, Izzy Oneiric, Jason Shankel and Kate Cowan.

As the Cyberpunk Project writes in an essay called "Neuromancer Afterlife":

"I am the dead, and their land."

With life redefined, so comes a new afterlife. New gods, new demons, new inhabitants. And many different levels, reincarnations. The body can be remade, copied, clones carry on the family line. Cold sleep, cryogenics extending presence, slow wasting. Cons tructs, down loads of the soul, ghosts. Digital purgatory, brain death.

"For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons. Only now are such things possible."

Omnicient, omnipotent, omnipresent. Demons or gods, they possess power. They are worshipped and feared. The AIs. Religion has advanced with technology, heaven and hell can be interfaced with, the powers addressed. Science has brought back that which was previously done without. Some hint o f symbiosis, of the immortal hive. Others fear them like the lords of Hell. To themselves, they just are. They exist, they reside. They are the infinity of angels on the head of a pin, the threads of the matrix. They, It, is All.

"To live here is to live. There is no difference."

Memories are virtual, we relive them without physically manifesting. Perhaps the mind can be reproduced, decanted into a simulated environment. Perhaps what we ta ke for granted every day is such an experience. It is the age old question of who we are. How do we define ourselves? Bits, bytes? By the flow of information, by wiring, by memory, data? In the Virtual age, what do we become? And were do we go? Is this salvation?

Several people in Neuromancer by William Gibson. Super-hacker Case meets his girlfriend Linda Lee, who was murdered in Chiba City, but her consciousness lives on in the cyber-matrix. And then he and his friends have to steal a ROM containing the personality and memories of McCoy Pauley, aka The Dixie Flatline. And at the end of the book, mocking inhuman laughter suggests that Pauley may have been reanimated permanently in cyberspace, thanks to the help of Neuromancer/Wintermute. As one book puts it, he gets an unsettling vision of his life continuing in cyberspace after his body dies.

Reno in Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams. This uber-hacker dies in the "real" world, but his consciousness lives on in cyberspace, and even manages to ambush the bad guys electronically at the end of the novel.

Pulse (movie). A haxx0r named Josh steals and distributes (why?) a computer virus that opens a portal to the world of the dead. And then he commits suicide, but he keeps popping up on the computer, sending people messages and videos and mortgage-refi spam. (It was 2006.) And later in the movie, you can see spooky dead children trapped inside the computer, and the implication is that the computer is trapping their dead spirits. The only way to escape is to get out of cellphone coverage, because the cellphones have it too. Veronica Mars, why don't you just use your awesome sleuthing skills to solve this one?

River Song and friends in Doctor Who, "Forest Of The Dead". River Song does the time-honored thing of knocking the Doctor out so she can take his place in the brain-frying machine and get cooked to a sizzle. But luckily, FutureDoctor has left a handy escape clause that PresentDoctor can use to bring her back from the dead: her fancy sonic screwdriver retains a copy of her consciousness, and he's able to upload her into the planet-sized library's computer system, where she's stuck taking care of a couple of snot-nosed virtual kids forever. Way better than being dead, right? Right?

Eva Friedel in Memories: Magnetic Rose. This famous opera singer retires to a space station, but when she dies, she leaves behind an A.I. imprint of her personality. Unfortunately, it's damaged and incomplete.

The Mailman and Ery in "True Names" by Vernor Vinge. The Mailman backs up his brain into the system, but his consciousness runs so slow, he only manages to experience fifteen or twenty hours of human awareness in the several years he's running online. Ery plans to do the same thing, only better:

She was grinning now, an open though conspiratorial grin that was very familiar. "When Bertrand Russell was very old, and probably as dotty as I am now, he talked of spreading his interests and attention out to the greater world and away from his own body, so that when that body died he would scarcely notice it, his whole consciousness would be so diluted through the outside world.

"For him, it was wishful thinking, of course. But not for me. My kernel is out there in the System Every time I'm there I transfer a little more of myself The kernel is growing into a true Erythrina, who is also truly me. When this body dies," she squeezed his hand with hers, "when this body dies, I will still be, and you can still talk to me."

The story's hero, Mr. Slippery, thinks about stopping her, but realizes this is an inevitable end-point of human evolution.

Dr. Londes and his cult in Cowboy Bebop, "Brain Scratch." The imaginary Dr. Londes starts a cult that believes in achieving immortality by digitizing your brain and zapping it up to the network. But it turns out Dr. Londes doesn't exist at all, he's just a construct.

Alex McCandless in Freejack. In this movie, which is almost more awesomeness than two hours can contain, Emilio Estevez is a racecar driver who is about to die in a spectacular crash, but his body is whisked forward in time to the dystopian future of 2009. He's held prisoner by Mick Jagger, and it turns out that Anthony Hopkins wants his body. Because Hopkins died in an accident while on a business trip, and his mind is preserved in cyberspace, where he and Estevez face off in a virtual world. Can Estevez keep Hopkins from downloading himself into his body?

Moloch in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "I, Robot... You, Jane." Somehow scanning a demonic spellbook causes the trapped demon to get scanned into the interweb, and it starts having steamy chats with Willow. Ah, cyberlove.

Kenshiro "Zero" Cochrane in Ghost Rider 2099. Zero is a hacker in the futuristic world of Marvel's 2099 universe. He gets hit with a poisoned flechette in Transverse City, but as his body dies, he jacks his consciousness up to the cyberverse. A group of A.I.s living in Cyberspace — in an area known as the Ghostworks — retrieve Zero's concsiousness and download it into a fancy new robot body, to become Ghost Rider 2099, the cyber-spirit of cyber-vengeance. It's cyber!

Almost everyone in "Sweats" by Keith Brooke, in the anthology We Think Therefore We Are. In this story, everybody (or at least everybody rich) gets to go to a virtual afterlife after dying, which also allows a murder victim to prosecute (and persecute) his murderer after death. Even up to the point of stealing his murderer's body and downloading himself into it.

David and Invisigoth in The X-Files, "Kill Switch." A hacker named David develops a way to upload his brain to the net in this episode written by Gibson. And that turns out to come in handy, since later on David's dead body is found, with a cyber-helmet attached to his head. The A.I. that used to be David takes Mulder prisoner because he wants a copy of a killer virus called "Kill Switch" that Mulder has. In the end, both David and his girlfriend, Esther aka Invisigoth, manage to escape into the internet together. In another Chris Carter creation, the short-lived TV series Harsh Realm, Thomas Hobbes is declared dead after his brain is uploaded to a virtual apocalpytic war scenario called "Harsh Realm."

Magi in Neon Genesis Evangelion. The supercomputer "Magi" is created from the mind of Ristsuko Akagi's dead mother. It has "the mother, the scientist and the woman" balancing out its brain. Also, two of the "Evas" are made from the souls of two characters' dead moms.

Graves in Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Schizoid Man." This pompous scientist is dying, but he has a plan to transfer his brain into a computer network. Instead, though, he downloads his consciousness into the android Data, whereupon he starts reciting crappy poetry about himself, feuding with Picard and whistling showtunes from Wizard Of Oz. Some people just don't deserve cyber-immortality.

Juliana Soong in Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Inheritance." Juliana Soong dies, but her husband Noonien saves her by transferring her into an android body so realistic, she can't even tell she's not the original Juliana. And later on, Noonien achieves a kind of immortality after his own death, by leaving a subroutine in Data's brain that makes Data dream of him.

Roushana Maitland in Song Of Time by Ian R. MacLeod. The protagonist of this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel is a concert violinist who's about to pass into a "virtual afterlife," when she discovers a half-drowned man on the Cornish coast.

Lawnmower Man (the movie). Jobe, the idiot turned cyber-savant, kicks Pierce Brosnan's ass — but then he gets caught in an explosion that destroys the building his body is in. Good thing Joby's found a "backdoor" to the mainframe his consciousness was trapped in. Now cyberspace is his oyster. His salty, slimy, cyber oyster. Full of slimy, salty bad cybersex.

Everyone, in Silicon Karma by Thomas A. Eaton. Someone invents a viable mindscanning technology, which means that everyone goes to cyberspace after he/she dies. And of course, naughty people learn how to hack the afterlife and mess up everyone's experience of Heaven.

Nono in FAQ:Frequently Asked Questions. The hero of this indie film runs away from a totalitarian government, and then at the end of the movie, he sees his dead girlfriend, Angelique, reincarnated inside an erotic broadcast online. He somehow leaves his body behind and goes inside the erotic internet to be with her. (Or does he? It's an art film, so who knows what actually happens?)

Jonathan Wilde, in The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod. Any novel that starts with the line, "He woke, and remembered dying" automatically earns inclusion on this list. In Stone Canal, the anarchist leader Jonathan Wilde lived on Earth 600 years ago, but a group of radicals retrieve his consciousness from online, and put him into a new body. The only trouble is, this new Wilde isn't quite the same person as the original.

A few people in Ghost In The Shell: S.A.C. This anime series features a few people who die but have their consciousnesses saved in virtual networks. For example, in Ghost In The Shell: SAC: Solid State Society, Koshiki gets permission to work from home via a cybernetic body. And then he dies due to illness, but it's two years before anyone notices, because his cybernetic body keeps going under his control, and his consciousness appears to be preserved.

Hellraiser: Hellworld. This direct-to-DVD sequel revolves around an evil MMO called Hellworld (at hellworld.com.) One of the players, Adam, commits suicide, and Pinhead tells Adam's father, "Your son was quite the prodigy. He opened the gateway to Hell. But you never believed yourself, did you?" The other teens who play Hellworld are invited to a special Hellworld party at a spooky mansion, with sex and drugs and blood and guts. Reality blurs together with the MMO world, and the hapless teens realize they're partying... in cyberhell. Or something.

Frankie in "Xanadu" by Thomas M. Disch. Frankie dies and finds his consciousness uploaded to a virtual world. It's all sunshine and puppies at first, until the company that runs this afterlife falls on hard times and needs to raise some more capital. Suddenly, all of the people in cyber-Heaven have to work for a living again — and due to a clerical error, his consciousness is downloaded into a woman's body and he has to work as a prostitute. Probably not the eternal reward he had in mind.

Caprica (TV Series). Long before the Cylons had a plan — or a sexy red dress for that matter — a monotheistic cult-member blows up a monorail in Caprica, killing everyone on board including Zoe Graystone, daughter of computer genius Daniel Graystone. Luckily, she's a computer genius too, and she's already uploaded her consciousness to the 'net, creating a cyber-avatar called Zoe-A that lives on in the virtual orgyspace. (Becuase, of course, the human brain only takes up 300 megabytes of storage space.)

Mr. Hormel in "New Hope For The Dead" by David Langford. In a similar vein, Mr. Hormel is a fully paid-up resident of the digital afterlife, with a trust fund in place to guarantee his eternal rest. Unfortunately, the global economy takes a nosedive, and he's faced with three choices: going into storage as a .zip file until the economy improves, having his clock/processor speed slowed down so that a century passes in a few weeks for him, or working for a living. And the third choice isn't even as fun as it sounds. (You can read the whole thing here.)

Everyone in The Accord by Keith Brooke. The Accord is a virtual realm, where you can upload your consciousness, so it'll live on after you die. (As someone in the novel says, "If you want to enter Heaven, first you must be saved." Ha ha.) Noah has an affair with Priscilla inside the Accord, but her husband finds out and murders her. Noah kills himself so he can be with her in the Accord — but there's a catch. The version of you in the Accord isn't who you were at the moment of death, but who you were the last time you uploaded. The Priscilla who lives on inside the Accord is younger and doesn't remember loving Noah at all. This novel takes place in the same universe as "Sweats," mentioned above.

Vance in Batman Beyond, "Lost Soul." Vance died many years ago, when he was an old man. But his consciousness was digitized and became an A.I. After his son dies of a heart attack, his grandson Bobby reactivates him, so he can help run the family business. But instead, Vance tricks Bobby into putting him online, so he can take over all of Gotham City's computers. And then he takes over the cybernetic Batsuit! Oh noes!

The alien entity in Stargate: SG1, "Entity". This disembodied consciousness, which apparently was originally a living being, travels through a wormhole and downloads itself into the mainframe. Eventually it escapes and downloads itself into Sam Carter's body.

Eiri Masami in Serial Experiments Lain. (Thanks to SumatiAmphimonous for suggesting this one.) The project director of Protocol 7 is in charge of advancing the Wired, the sum total of human computing power, but he also aims to copy his brain into the Wired so he can live forever. A few days after he succeds in doing this, he dies in the "real" world. He aims to convince Lain, a 14 year old girl, to follow in his footsteps.

Paul Durham and others, in Permutation City by Greg Egan. (Thanks to WRyan for suggesting this one.) In the future of 2045, rich people are backing up their brainwaves into complete duplicates, known as Copies, and the Copies have started agitating for full personhood and civil rights. Along comes huckster Paul Durham, who proposes to create a virtual-reality city for the wealthy to live in. Durham disembowels himself in the bathtub, but thousands of years later he's still bopping around Permutation City.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown. Thanks also to Zack Stentz, Rus McLaughlin, Jack Random, Tim Chevalier and @NoMentionOfKev, @anewthought, @Lazybastid and @cartoonmoney on Twitter.

Imagi is selling shares in the company for an increase in funding that will hopefully increase its " development of four full-length feature computer graphics imagery animation movies, scheduled tentatively to be released from 2009 to 2011." Imagi is already set to release movies of the classics Astro Boy and Gatchaman. It's probably a safe bet that the other two releases designated for those years (they'll put out a movie every 8 months) will most likely be anime as well.

Hollywood is mad for live action anime remakes: Leonardo DiCaprio's production company and Warner Brothers are set to bring Akira to life, and Stephen Spielberg and DreamWorks are recreating the immensely popular Ghost in the Shell, which will also be 3-D. But I'm most excited for the re-creation of Robotech, and the mecha-warriors of the future.

I'm looking forward to a year of introducing the world of anime to the mainstream audience, I especially would like to see what everyone will think of Takashi Murakami Planting the Seeds feature film.

It's a mere matter of months until we start seeing more American live action flicks with school girl's toting around weaponry Mai HiME style, and is it wishful thinking to hope for a epic fantasy remake of InuYasha? I say the more girls in school outfits blowing up the world, the better.

Sadly, the synopsis doesn't sound that great, with its references to "spiritual decay" and Jazz singers:

Simeon Rockwell is a man who becomes infected with a spiritual disease. His past and now this disease, forces Simeon to wrestle with his own inner demons and help rid the world of this virus. Simeon is aided by a beautiful female Jazz Singer named Satia Niall, who helps him in understanding his place in the greater struggle of mankind. Simeon realizes that time is running out and he must act fast to stop the spiritual predator who wants to bring about the downfall of society. During the course of this adventure, Simeon and Satia both change, as they bring out the best in each other; and eventually fall in love.

And he wants to turn it into a live-action 3D movie. Written by Jamie Moss, whose only other work was on Street Kings, a cop actioner currently in theaters. I've actually been wanting to see Street Kings (Keanu Reeves is not Moss' fault, after all) and I like the idea of bringing in a writer with a flair for cop action. Ghost in the Shell is, after all, a cop movie. The main plot arc involves solving a crime of the future: non-consensual brain hacking. And I'm willing to admit Spielberg did make one hell of a slick, menacing dystopia in A.I. — as long as you ignore the egregiously awful ending.

Still, I'm worried the film will lose its freaky philosophical edge when translated into Spielbergese. This is a complicated story based on a famous manga series, which has spawned several movie sequels, games, and TV shows in Japan. Fans are going to have high expectations, and throwing lots of Dreamworks money at the movie to meet those expectations isn't the right way to go. Sure we want to see some awesome effects, and a fully-realized New Port City. But we really need good writing and plotting to make sure nothing is lost in translation.

Dreamworks Doing 3D Live Action Version of Ghost in the Shell [Quiet Earth]

• First of all, let's turn to the historical similarities. Back in 1986, Francis Ford Coppolla directed (and George Lucas executive produced) Disney's Captain EO, which was turned into an attraction at Disneyland, Disneyworld's Epcot Center, and later at Tokyo Disneyland and Disneyland Paris. Michael Jackson starred as EO, and Anjelica Huston played the evil Supreme Leader who was a horrific cybernetic queen who lived in a giant rat's nest of tentacles and cables. EO sang her a song and turned her pretty multiple times every day before fading away in 1998.
• In 1989, Masamune Shirow's famous Ghost in the Shell manga started appearing in Japan. As Major Motoko begins following the trail of the mysterious "Puppeteer," they eventually capture one of the cybernetic bodies that he/she has "ghost hacked" into. Just before falling into government hands, the body had thrown itself in front of a bus, which didn't leave her body fully intact. No arms, no lower torso, and a dangling spinal column. Oh, and no clothes, either.
• Mamoru Oshii directed the animated version of Ghost in the Shell in 1995, giving us a better look at the now-named "Puppet Master," who looks much like he/she did in the manga, except without that scowling countenance. Maybe getting some color and a little animation did wonders for his/her complexion. Plus they still haven't managed to find a halter top or anything.
• When Star Trek's Data met the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact in 1996, she looked a lot like a combination of both the Ghost in the Shell puppet-body, and the evil queen from Captain EO. Although she had a much splotchier complexion and didn't look so good once all of the skin got burned off her face, but she was cybernetically sexy as she got lowered into her sleek body. Plus, Data got a little Borg action from her, so she couldn't have been all bad.
• Of course, it's hard to look at any of these ladies without comparing them to the Venus de Milo. While she may have her lower torso intact and her spinal column tucked away nicely, she's still armless and mysterious. Plus she's locked away in the Louvre behind that giant glass pyramid and the Da Vinci code, so who knows what secrets the 2000 year old statue is keeping. She might be the mother of all Terminators, for all we know.