Over the weekend, the live-action Ghost in the Shell film flopped, grossing just $19 million at the box office. Considering that the film had a $110 million budget, it's a disappointing box office performance, and according to a Paramount executive, the film's whitewashing controversy is the reason why it was doomed from the start.
Even most critics didn't like the film much, with many saying that the film lacked the magic of the original source material.
A Paramount executive thinks that Ghost in the Shell performed so poorly because of the casting controversy that stuck with the film for years. When it was announced in 2014 that Scarlett Johansson, a white actress, would play Major Motoko Kusunagi, critics complained that Hollywood was whitewashing another role that an Asian woman could have played.
Speaking to CBC News, Paramount domestic distribution chief Kyle Davies said: "We had hopes for better results domestically. I think the conversation regarding casting impacted the reviews"
"You've got a movie that is very important to the fanboys since it's based on a Japanese anime movie," he added. "So you're always trying to thread that needle between honouring the source material and make a movie for a mass audience. That's challenging, but clearly the reviews didn't help."
Last week, Johansson defended the film's casting, explaining that her character did not have an ethnic identity. The actress told Good Morning America that The Major is a "human brain in an entirely machine body, she is essentially identity-less."
"I would never attempt to play a person of a different race," she said. "Hopefully any question that comes up of my casting will hopefully be answered by audiences when they see the film."
Ghost in the Shell is now showing in theaters.
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