Death Note, the popular manga and anime, was in the works at Warner Bros. but the studio has opted to drop out and let showrunner Adam Wingard (You’re Next) shop it around. It’s being picked up by Netflix.
Nat Wolff will play Light Yagami, the owner of the deadly notebook.
If you want a laugh, the Japanese live-action version is available on Crunchyroll. It’s awful. IMO, the anime isn’t very good either, but people seem to love the heck out of this.
I kinda like L, but the overall story in the anime left me flat. There’s a cool prequel novel by Nisioisin about L though…
I enjoyed the manga, it was good fun and a change of pace (haven’t seen the anime though).
The core concept of the series seems easily transferable to a western setting so I am surprised something like it hasn’t been made already. It also shares the focus of mainstream TV in being obsessed with ‘plot’ and its development being the center of the story. Since Netflix hasn’t produced that many crappy shows, this could be one to watch.
Ha ha, you dorks have fun with your thread about some dopey anime thing!
Wait, what? Okay, I’m sorry I said that thing about you guys being dorks.
Can I namedrop real quick? A friend of mine works for a company that has produced some of Wingard’s movies. She knew I’ve been a big fan of him and his collaborator Simon Barrett since way back when they were a couple of guys who made a moody arthouse serial killer movie no one saw called A Horrible Way to Die. When I got my cancer diagnosis a year and a half ago, she asked them to sign a poster of The Guest for me. And they didn’t just write their names. They wrote little personal get well messages. Wingard wrote that he hoped me staring at a picture of Dan Stevens would make me feel better. He put a 666 between his first and last name. Barrett wrote “thanks for caring about our films, man.” Which seemed like such a, I dunno, humble way to put it. Not “thanks for liking our films” or “thanks for supporting our films” or “thanks for being a fan”. Just thanks for even caring about them. Then producers of the movie signed the poster, too, adding little get well wishes. I hung it on my wall and saw it every day. I still do. It was a small thing and nowhere near the level of support I got from people I knew – you guys included! – but I felt a tiny warm buzz from the idea that these really cool and talented filmmakers had briefly thought about how much it sucked that I had cancer.
So, uh, an anime thing from Adam Wingard? Okay, sure. I’m on board.
-Tom
I loved the manga up until those two shits Near and Mello were introduced and the story took a nosedive to boresville. Never finished the series even though I was only a few volumes away.
Now that Death Note is coming here, I wonder if there will be a surge of news stories like this and this.
Death Note had me hooked up to the point where Light and L resolve their battle. Then, for some reason, the show kept going and it fell into every annoying anime trope and sucked.
+1 to “good start, awful finish.” Not sure I have much interest in a live-action adaptation.
Agreed, the show was best while L was there. Didn’t care for Near and Mellow. Or the second half theme ‘song’. WHAT’S UP PEOPLE.
Set shots of Keith Stanfield as L.
Exactly! Well stated.
I would fire a brand manager if he gave me that still as the thumb for a trailer.
Yeah. What do they think they’re selling? A Columbine documentary or something?
I don’t think it is that out of place. In the anime, L was characterized by his eyes (okay, and his style of sitting in a chair). Being told “Death Note” and seeing that still, I know immediately that is L.
I enjoyed Death Note, but that still does not make me want to watch anything.
Here’s the trailer:
I like that trailer.
I don’t understand why this exists. I don’t mean that as in “why adapt to another medium”/“why adapt a series as a movie” etc.
I just watched it, mostly (I was mudding and gaming some while watching). Had I not been doing other things during the running length it would have been a complete waste of however many minutes of my life. Light is given the book. Light discovers some rules. They seem really important but then they’re largely ignored for most of the movie (and when they are there they don’t amount to much; I maybe confusing the other Death Note media with this one, but I thought only the holder of the book could write names in it? That gets tossed aside here but I thought it was pointed out at one point). Light gets a new girlfriend. They decide to kill bad people. She goes batshit crazy and Light “cleverly” foils her plan to take the book from him and ultimately kills her, but there’s no emotional impact and I’m pretty sure the powers of the book got stretched considerably here. There’s handwaving at the “Big issues” occasionally, but the movie movies too briskly between it’s parts (opening to For Great Justice to “shit maybe this isn’t a great idea maybe we’re not good guys” to “we have to hide from the weird detective guy for a bit” to “fuck it lets go to winter formal and end this shit”) ffor anything to really get a meaty discussion. L is kind of a compelling character, although ultimately all he does is sort of force events in the finale into motion. The only thing approaching a “lesson” learned by any character is a clumsy, missed landing that “playing god is hard”. he Death God serves no purpose whatsoever, occasionally needling light a bit because eh why not.
I spent the entire movie looking for distractions.
Yep, it was terrible. The protagonist wasn’t even slightly sympathetic. He murders a classmate that bullied him without a second thought. And then they spend the rest of the movie showing him only using it on evil people, which makes no sense as he’s clearly a psychopath.
I did like L. But he couldn’t carry this miserable shitty movie.
