Netflix has released a second trailer, a featurette and a poster for Adam Wingard’s upcoming film of the classic Japanese manga and anime Death Note, and it’s interesting to see what’s been changed, and what definitely looks like an Adam Wingard movie.
And here’s the featurette…
And the poster:
It’s good to get a clearer look at Wingard’s approach to the characters as well as seeing that his visual style is very much there. The script by Charley Parlapanides, Vlas Parlapanides and Jeremy Slater has obviously made some changes to the characters, as the filmmaker has discussed with IGN.
“At its core, it’s taking the themes of who the characters are but it’s exploring them in a new context. Ultimately the personalities of the characters a quite a bit different… L isn’t the same. There are a lot of similarities — he likes candy, sometimes he romps around with his shoes off. Those kinds of things, but at the end of the day the take on L and the escalation of his character is very different. He’s still a weirdo. It’s the same for almost all the characters across the board. Probably the only character that comes off as the same way as he does in the anime is Ryuk.”
We’re definitely excited to see what the excellent Lakeith Stanfield (Atlanta, Get Out, Selma) does with L…In the same interview he talks about the process of relocating the story from Japan to America (specifically Seattle) and how certain story elements needed to be changed to allow for that, and it’s definitely an interesting read.
The Death Note movie has attracted controversy due to the lack of Asian-American actors in the lead roles, the latest in a string of high-profile movies and TV shows to have done this. There are also a lot of concerns from the fans of the manga and anime about how the relocation from Japan to America will be handled, notably the question of the Shinigami Ryuk. We’ll have to wait and see…
Death Note stars Nat Wolff as Light Turner, Lakeith Stanfield as L, Margaret Qualley as Mia Sutton, Shea Whigham as James Turner, Paul Nakauchi as Watari and Willem Dafoe as the voice of Ryuk.
“Based on the famous Japanese manga written by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, Death Note follows a high school student who comes across a supernatural notebook, realizing it holds within it a great power; if the owner inscribes someone’s name into it while picturing their face, he or she will die. Intoxicated with his new godlike abilities, the young man begins to kill those he deems unworthy of life.”
Death Note will premiere exclusively on August 25th to Netflix members worldwide. Keep up with the latest genre news with the new issue of SciFiNow.
