On December 1, 2003, Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata published the first chapter of what was destined to be one of the great series of contemporary manga, only they didn’t know it at the time. However, Death Note marked an entire generation and is still being honored and parodied today, almost 20 years after its tumultuous ending. It had an anime adaptation of 37 episodes, several video games, four movies, and two Japanese live-action series, as well as two short sequels. However, no one expected that what would sink the very lucrative franchise would be… Netflix.
Light, note in the notebook: Netflix
Over the years, all kinds of names were rumored for the inevitable American adaptation based on Death Note. Zac Efron, Shane Black (I wish we could see an alternate universe where he made his version), and even indie filmmaker Gus Van Sant were working on it, and it was even leaked that they wanted to completely remove Ryuk and turn the story into a revenge tale without shinigamis involved. Finally, the chosen one for the victory was a more or less independent filmmaker who, four years after perpetrating this adaptation, would become one of Hollywood’s greatest Midas Kings: Adam Wingard.
Wingard had just tasted success with You’re Next, a film that cost only 1 million euros and grossed 26, and everyone thought he was the right one to bring the manga universe to Seattle for about 40 million dollars. Believe it or not, at that time all the movie studios fought for the rights to such a franchise, and in the end, the one who came out on top was Netflix, which did not imagine that the news would be received with absolute coldness by otakus around the world.
They had reasons to be suspicious. Although Death Note did many things right (such as the design of Ryuk, voiced by Willem Dafoe), the vast majority was a tremendous blunder: it tried to stray so far from the original material to be its own project with its own rules that it lost its way. In fact, it seemed to misunderstand its own characters, who were very humanized despite the almost psychopathic madness of the original manga. Of course, as soon as the casting was announced, fans crucified it for its obvious whitewashing (using Western actors instead of Asian ones, and changing everything related to Japan), and there was little Wingard could do to cope with the wave of insults that came his way on social media.
The best thing that can be said about Death Note now, eight years after its release, is that it tried. However, it failed with the whole team: the proposal was not understood, it was not interesting enough, and to make matters worse, the critics panned it, giving it a practically total suspension. To make matters worse, before the release, Wingard had already announced that Netflix wanted at least one sequel that was in production. In fact, the last news about it was in 2021, where it was promised that it would take into account the people’s criticisms to avoid repeating the same mistakes. As of today, we haven’t heard anything else, and perhaps that’s for the best.
Wingard knew how to rise from absolute failure and became one of the architects of the “Monsterverse” thanks to the two films that pit Godzilla against Kong. With such a huge amount of money as they have recalled, I don’t think he is inclined to return to the story of Light and company: live-action adaptations of mangas are only for the bravest.
