Netflix’s Death Note Writers Break Down Fan Response to the Film

Death Note recently returned to the “land of the living” with a sequel manga chapter that brought back the shinigami named Ryuuk and the supernatural notebook that can kill nearly anyone with the flick of a pen, but fans of the anime still remember the controversial live action movie that was released on the streaming service of Netflix and we had the opportunity to sit down with the writers to talk about the fans’ response! Directed by Adam Wingard and starring Willem Dafoe as the voice of Ryuuk, the movie was controversial among fans for a number of reasons!

Charley and Vlas Parlapanides were writers for the live action Death Note film, as well as the recently released Netflix animated series of Blood Of Zeus, and we were able to sit down with them and chat about the controversial adaptation of the anime franchise made by Tsugumi Ohba to pick their brains about the response to the live action entry:

“The one thing I would just add, and again, I think the film works, but films are director driven business, especially in the traditional studio model. And the one thing I would say is that we were in on death note back in 2006, reading bootleg copies of the PDFs online that had the American translation and our original drafts were more true to what the story is…” Charley noted, as he broke down the overall writing process. “And that’s just a choice, and again, as Vlas mentioned, after we worked on it, a lot of other writers worked on it. And it was much more of Slater’s draft that became the final film and again, it’s a choice of the director to steer the story the way he wants to steer it. And that’s a great property.”

Vlas then went into the topic of the fan reception specifically stating, “And we’re saddened that the fans didn’t like it. We want them to be happy. We want them to like it. All writers want that. And I think that Jeremy Slater did a good job, but, he had a very specific mandate and we’re disappointed by the reception because we wanted to, again, give the fans something that they would like, but we also understand where they were coming from.”

What did you think of the live action Death Note film on Netflix? Do you want to see a sequel? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of Ryuuk!