The popular Video on Demand platform Netflix released internationally the movie Death Note (2017) as part of their Netflix Originals catalog one year ago, in August 2017. And despite the poor and negative reviews, the bosses of Netflix have been quite satisfied with its performance. As the director of the movie Adam Wingard admitted, Netflix has in mind since the beginning that their Death Note incarnations would be “at least two films”.
Death Note is a Japanese manga series written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. The story follows Light Yagami, a high school student who stumbles across a mysterious otherworldly notebook: the “Death Note“, which belonged to the Shinigami Ryuk, and grants its user the power to kill anyone whose name and face he knows. The series centers around Light‘s subsequent attempts to use the Death Note to change the world into a utopian society without crime and the subsequent efforts of a special task force led by L, a reclusive international criminal profiler, to apprehend him and end his reign of terror.
The manga has been the object of numerous adaptations in all sorts formats, from video-games to anime shows, novels, TV series and several action films. Four Japanese film adaptations have seen the light so far, dated from 2006 to 2016. And finally, Hollywood put an eye on the story and released its American version last year. Adam Wingard, popular for directing the movies A Horrible Way to Die (2010), You’re Next (2011) or Blair Witch (2016), was the chosen one to lead the project. The movie was starred by Nat Wolff, Lakeith Stanfield, Margaret Qualley, Shea Whigham, Paul Nakauchi, Jack Ettlinger, Matthew Kevin Anderson, Chris Britton and Willem Dafoe as the voice of Ryuk.
Greg Russo, who is the author of the screenplays for upcoming films Category 6, Mortal Kombat and the yet untitled Resident Evil reboot, has been the chosen one to write the Death Note (2017) sequel. The Hollywood Reporter has published recently an interview with Adam Wingard where this new sequel is discussed. Netflix is quite proud of Death Note (2017) and claims it has “earned” a sequel, so I guess the story goes on.
