Producers of Whitewashed Scarlett Johansson Movie Tested Tech to Make Her Look Asian

Scarlett Johansson has a pretty recognizable face. It's also a recognizably white one. 

But that didn't matter to some of the producers of Johansson's upcoming movie Ghost In the Shell, in which Johansson assumes the role of Motoko Kusanagi, an Asian woman. 

According to "multiple independent sources" close to Ghost In the Shell, the film's distributors, Paramount and DreamWorks, attempted to use CGI and other visual effects to slightly alter Johansson's face to appear Asian, ScreenCrush reports. 

Paramount admitted to performing some CGI tests, but denied it involved Johansson's character.

"A test was done related to a specific scene for a background actor which was ultimately discarded," Paramount said to ScreenCrush. "Absolutely no visual effects tests were conducted on Scarlett's character and we have no future plans to do so."

According to ScreenCrush, the sources maintain that Johansson was the focus of the test, regardless of what Paramount claims. 

Hopefully, instead of CGI or Emma Stone, Hollywood can start to rely on a different formula for telling stories about people of color: hiring people of color.