I'm influenced by a lot of filmmakers; I like English filmmakers because I feel a kin to them.

I think whenever you cast someone, someone's going to be critical about it.

I feel very strongly about the legacy of Ghost and I'm the next part of that chapter and hopefully a very long and continuing story through the franchise of Ghost in the Shell which is already a huge universe. So yes, I felt pressure, but you always feel pressure as an artist creatively in any endeavour you do, so you just have to do the best that you can do and then hope that is successful.

To me there's very few actresses who've had twenty years experience who have that cyberpunk aesthetic already baked in. Scarlett Johansson comes from such edgy films from Lost in Translation to Under the Skin - she's got an incredible body of work and the attitude and the toughness of her really is to me, the Major.

So when it was my turn to start developing projects, I knew the writers I wanted to work with, and I had met every head of studio, every executive and a lot of producers. I started finding things, little crumbs off other people's tables that I would make my own.

I think what we're trying to do as filmmakers is make a big, gritty, raw, epic movie and within that show things graphically in a way that they haven't been seen in that world before.

I went to America with a very specific idea of what I wanted to do.