Remember Netflix’s horrible live-action adaptation of Tsugumi Ohba’s Death Note series back in 2017? We hoped to put that all behind us but a new planned live-action adaptation of the anime, which was popularly a manga, is in the works, again…and to make this news much more distressing, Netflix is working on it.
The major production company/ streaming service is on track in its path of making a live-action production based on the manga, and this time it’s going to be a TV series rather than a movie. They’ve already hired Miss Annity writer Halia Abdel-Meguid to work in the writing department, with Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer filling in as executive producers.
Netflix Working On A Live-Action Death Note TV Series
With an attempt to actually be able to tell the whole story in a series format, Netflix has begun the production process of its upcoming live-action adaptation of Death Note.
The production company has hired Halia Abdel-Meguid to write, who to be fair isn’t a bad choice. She’s fluent in Japanese and used to live in Japan’s capital Tokyo, and yes, she’s a fan of the Death Note manga as well as the anime adaptation it received in 2006.
As exciting as the prospect of a full-length TV series of the manga sounds with the Duffer Brothers acting as executive producers, fans still hold a grudge against Netflix for its first attempt with a movie and they can’t seem to forget about it. Here are their reactions-
A ray of hope-
They don’t trust the new writer! –
A straight-up nope to the whitewashing from the movie-
It’s worth a try-
They’re questioning Netflix’s artistic capability now-
These reactions are quite hilarious, understandably so. But we must also note that this will be an entirely different take on the anime/manga, with no relation to the 2017 movie.
Also Read: 10 Greatest Psychological Thriller Anime That Will Mess With Your Mind
What Netflix Did Wrong In Its First Death Note Attempt
Netflix’s previous movie adaptation of Death Note was quite a spectacle, and not for its visuals or storytelling, but for the backlash that followed after its release from a huge part of the anime community as well as critics.
The adaptation drew criticism for feeling too rushed, which was understandable for an attempt to squeeze the vastness of the manga’s lore into a 100-minute movie.
However, the movie doesn’t look too bad on paper. The lead cast saw the great Willem Dafoe cast as the voice actor for Ryuk, The Naked Brothers star Nat Wolff as the protagonist Light Turner, Get Out star Lakeith Stanfield as L, and so on.
Notice something? None of these lead roles have Asian actors, another major criticism of the movie was the blatant whitewashing of characters.
Related: Worst Live-Action Movies Based On Anime, Ranked
Perhaps the only positive takeaway from the movie, apart from Stanfield and Dafoe’s performances, was that the original creators, Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, praised the movie. But even then they agreed that the adaptation did diverge from the original work to make it more accessible to a larger audience.
The sequel to the 2017 movie is currently underway despite all the negative feedback, and Mortal Kombat writer Greg Russo is set to write. Producer Masi Oka also promised during an interview with Screen Rant that fan criticism will be taken into account, our only hope is that they know what they’re doing this time round.
Death Note is currently available for streaming on Netflix.
Source: Twitter
