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The Sunday NY Times chronicled Memoirs of the Geisha's noble march through the development process, in which Sony bravely ignored the project's poor prospects for Happy Meal tie-ins, its lack of malicious, sentient stealth bombers threatening the world with nuclear annihilation, and its tragic dearth of Caucasian-friendly roles to finally deliver an Oscar-baiting holiday moviegoing experience:

THE challenge was daunting for any Hollywood studio: an $80 million-plus historical romance, a wartime saga with no special effects or bursting bombs, and, as Amy Pascal, chairwoman of Sony's motion picture group, summed it up, "nothing to put in the toy store to merchandise" - no small consideration for executives accustomed to the ancillary revenue streams of family-fun franchises like "Spider-Man."


Then there was the little matter of race.

The film version of Arthur Golden's novel, "Memoirs of a Geisha," would, after all, require an all-Asian cast, something that Hollywood has rarely ventured and never in a big-budget, epic love story. [...]

The question remained, though: Would American moviegoers be grabbed by a film that did not at least include a white performer in a starring role, as have so many East-meets-West Hollywood movies, from Marlon Brando in heavy eye makeup in "The Teahouse of the August Moon" to Tom Cruise in "The Last Samurai"?

"To us, it never seemed like, 'Oh my gosh, it's all-Asian, what are we going to do?,' even though obviously it's a practical thought that eventually you face," [producer Lucy] Fisher said.

Indeed, there was no sense in panicking about the 400-pound sumo in the room represented by the "all-Asian" question, especially after preliminary talks determined that Brad Pitt was not looking to "do the Japanese thing" at this point in his career.