Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Death Note, the popular manga-turned-anime created by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, represents the network’s next big leap into genre programming.
A high school student finds the power over life and death a bit too hard to resist in the first clip from director Adam Wingard’s adaptation of Death Note. When Netflix announced a Death Note film, however, fans were skeptical.
In an earlier Death Note teaser, we watched Light Turner (played by Nat Wolff) get his first glimpse of Ryuk, but it was only for a couple of seconds, and the death god, or Shinigami, was shown out of focus.
Along with the Death Note trailer, Netflix released a poster featuring the creepy countenance of Willem Dafoe’s Ryuk, who has been hidden in shadows in the film’s trailers. Wingard’s version of the film promises to be “much darker and more exciting” than the anime fans are most familiar with.
Wingard, who’s casting decisions and own role as director has been brought into question by many fans for whitewashing still seemed excited by the show.
“The inspiration behind this was obviously to take some of the previously existing material and take some of the over-top-ideas, like giving someone the ability to literally kill anyone, and translate it into something unique and different”. With his previous work on films like “You’re Next” people tend to think of him very specifically for horror.
When asked why bother to make this film when other adaptation films have done so poorly, Wingard simply believes Death Note has a great story to tell.
Death Note is produced by Roy Lee (The Ring, The Departed), Dan Lin (The LEGO Movie, Sherlock Holmes), Jason Hoffs (Edge of Tomorrow), and Masi Oka (Heroes Reborn, Hawaii Five-O).