Netflix's adaptation of
Death Note will finally arrive on small screens this August, seeking to break the curse that plagues Western reworkings of manga and anime. As with any adaptation (especially one meant for American audiences) there's bound to be changes from the source material, and director Adam Wingard doesn't shy away from admitting that they altered plenty while trying to remain true to the crux of the original work.
"In the early stages of the film I was rereading all of the manga, really just looking at how does any of this translate to the United States. Ultimately, Death Note is such a Japanese thing. You can't just say let's port this over and it's going to all add up. They're two different worlds completely. Ultimately, whenever I say it’s about America, I’m looking at it like, what are the main kind of core issues going on in America,” Wingard told IGN.
“What are the things that people chalk up to conspiracy theories? What kind of weird underground programs does the government have? How do those work in the world of Death Note?”
"It’s one of those things where the harder I tried to stay 100 percent true to the source material, the more it just kind of fell apart," Wingard continued.
"You’re in a different country, you’re in a different kind of environment, and you’re trying to also summarize a sprawling series into a two-hour-long film. For me, it became about what do these themes mean to modern day America, and how does that affect how we tell the story. Ultimately, the cat and mouse chase between Light and L, the themes of good, evil, and what’s in between the gray area. Those are the core things of Death Note, and that’s really what we went for.”
Wingard coupled the change in setting with a slight shift in character as well; while the series protagonists — Light and L — retain their names, their characterization will be straying into some distinctly different territory.
“At its core, [the film is] 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,” Wingard said.
“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.”
Additionally, you can check out some new photos from the series below, featuring L (Keith Stanfield), Watari (Paul Nakauchi), Light (Nat Wolff), Ryuk (Willem Dafoe), and Mia (Margaret Qualley).
Death Note arrives on Netflix on August 25, 2017.