Death Note Director Describes Film's Most Exciting Sequences

Adapting a manga into a live-action film is rife with many challenges, and you're sure not to please everyone, but that hasn't stopped director Adam Wingard from attempting to convey the complex themes and compelling visuals of the manga Death Note for Netflix. The director recently revealed to IGN some of the things he's most excited to show audiences.

With the film changing locales from Japan to America, it allows the director to manipulate other elements of the story to suit the film he's trying to make. Of those changes, one, in particular, has to do with the character L.

"One of the most exciting things for me is to take L's backstory and flesh that out in the context of underground, clandestine American operations, programs, and things of that nature," Wingard admitted.

He continued, "In a way, it's sort of like taking the world that The Guest – my other film which kind of goes into super soldier creation programs and things like that – it's kind of taking those type of concepts and expanding it and saying what does that mean in the context of this film."

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The director also explained the challenges of finding the balance between remaining faithful to the story and making character tweaks that fit his vision.

"At its core, it's taking the themes of who the characters are but it's exploring them in a new context," detailed Wingard. "Ultimately the personalities of the characters are 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 noted, "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."

What if you had the power to decide who lives and who dies? We suggest you obey the rules. Based on the famous Japanese manga written by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, Death Note follows a high school student who comes across a supernatural notebook, realizing it holds within it a great power; if the owner inscribes someone's name into it while picturing their face, he or she will die. Intoxicated with his new godlike abilities, the young man begins to kill those he deems unworthy of life.

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Death Note will be available to stream on Netflix beginning August 25, 2017.