Scarlett Johansson proved she’s a bankable action star last year by delivering $458.8 million in box-office receipts with Lucy (reportedly budgeted at a mere $40 million) after years of playing a sidekick in a variety of Marvel movies.

Now she’s signed on for another chance to kick ass as the lead in an American adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, the popular comic book/movie/TV show franchise about an elite anti-cybercrime and terrorism unit in futuristic Japan. Johansson would play a hacker-detective who’s physically powerful and intellectually intimidating.

Variety notes that this cements Johansson as Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Lawrence’s peers in being able to get a movie greenlit based on her attachment alone. That there are so few actresses with such clout is a pretty depressing state of affairs.

And as much as we salute Johansson for proving that audiences want to see athletic women on screen, we also can’t help wishing that a character named Motoko Kusanagi could be played by an Asian-American actress. Hopefully DreamWorks won’t repeat the idiocies of Exodus and end up entirely white-washing an Asian story.

[via Variety]