Warner Bros. Death Note To Star Nat Wolff

Joshawott

Monsieur Monster
AUKN Staff
Following his leading role in 20th Century Fox's comedy-drama&nbsp;<strong>Paper Towns&nbsp;</strong>and his Teen Choice Award-winning performance in&nbsp;<strong>The Fault In Our Stars</strong>,&nbsp;twenty-year old Nat Wolff has reportedly signed on to his next starring role - in Warner Bros.' upcoming adaptation of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's hit manga series&nbsp;<strong>Death Note</strong>.&nbsp;

While the name of the character Wolff will be portraying hasn't been named in Variety's report, their description of a student who finds a notebook with the ability to kill whoever has their name written in it&nbsp;fits that of the series' protagonist Light Yagami.&nbsp;

Adam Wingard (<strong>V/H/S</strong><em>, </em><strong>The Guest</strong>) is currently set to direct the movie, which begins production in Spring 2016 with a script by&nbsp;<strong>The Fantastic Four</strong>&nbsp;screenwriter Jeremy Slater.&nbsp;<strong>Good Will Hunting</strong>&nbsp;director Gus Van Sant and&nbsp;<strong>Iron Man 3</strong>'s Shane Black were both previously attached to direct.

<strong>Death Note</strong>&nbsp;has previously been adapted into a number of live-action works in Japan, including a Warner Bros. film trilogy starring&nbsp;Tatsuya Fujiwara in the lead role&nbsp;opposite Kenichi Matsuyama as the eccentric detective L, as well as an NTV television drama. A fourth Japanese movie, tentatively titled&nbsp;<strong>Death Note 2016</strong>&nbsp;is also in development.

The original manga series was released in the United Kingdom by Viz Media, while the anime was distributed by Manga Entertainment UK and can currently be viewed on Netflix.

Source
 
When did this become a thing?

I'm kinda on the fence about the existing movies, not too keen on the way the 1st strayed at the end but the 2nd was a nice twist at the end (which avoided the need to do a movie about the less popular 2nd half of the series)

A quick google of Jeremy Slater suggests he actually wrote a much more interesting Fantastic Four reboot before someone else rewrote his script.
 
I can't talk about him in relation to the character he's playing or the series, but Nat Wolff was easily the least annoying thing about The Fault in Our Stars, so I wouldn't necessarily write him off just because he's a YA actor.
 
A little off topic but I wonder what they'll do for Ryuk. I haven't seen the live action Japanese movies but going by the trailer the CGI looks very poor for Ryuk but I'm really not sure how they actually could make it look good in Live Action.
 
No, I think that's quite a reasonable statement, especially when anime adaptations are involved. Think how many of these things have been announced in the past few years, only for nothing to happen...
 
Haven't seen Fault in our Stars but i watched Paper Towns recently and Nat Wolff was decent in it. He did just play a typical high school kid though as nothing really stood out about his performance so he might be good as Light/Kira hard to say.

Adam Wingard on the other hand fits Death Note quite well, the tone of the films he's directed, You're Next, The Guest and a couple of segments from the VHS films are quite similar to Death Note so i think he's perfect for it. I would liked Wingards frequent writing collaborator Simon Barrett to be with him on this as he's writing fits so well with Wingards directing.

Surprised WB made Jeremy Slater the writer when he wrote the recent Fantastic Four which was pretty bad. Apparently most of what he wrote wasn't in the finished film so i'd give him the benefit of the doubt considering Fox did meddle heavily with the film.

As said above the difficult thing for a Death Note film is nailing the supernatural & shinigami aspects. If they choose to stick with the way Ryuk looks in the manga/anime the CGI for him will look much better than the japanese live action but it has to blend in/look real enough to be believed.
 
IncendiaryLemon said:
A little off topic but I wonder what they'll do for Ryuk. I haven't seen the live action Japanese movies but going by the trailer the CGI looks very poor for Ryuk but I'm really not sure how they actually could make it look good in Live Action.
I remember reading an article a few years ago where Shane Black, who at the time was still attached to direct, mentioned that he fought with Warner Bros. about their desire to remove Ryuk and the shinigami altogether. Let's hope that all because Shane Black left, Warner Bros. haven't gone back down that train of thought.

What I find interesting though, is that Variety refers to L as a police officer.
 
As usual I've very skeptical over the whole live-action anime hollywood stuff but this one I may give a chance.

The director is the first example, his recent works (The Guest and You're Next) I've heard very positive reception for so there's a chance he might be able to provide some justice with the adaptation.

The actor, while his background is iffy, probably has never done a darker role before so this film could become something else - like when everyone didn't want Heath Ledger for The Joker and then suddenly everyone's jaws dropped.

As for Ryuk, I guess since it's pretty much going to be motion capture they could bring back the VA from the English dub anime, or have someone similar like Mike Patton (The Darkness).
 
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