The Akira live-action project garnered a new lease on life thanks to a slimmed-down budget and a new director at the helm. But there's another live-action anime project which is also still inching its way through Hollywood's development hell: Death Note.
After some thrashing back and forth between a few different parties, the project has most recently fallen under the provenance of Lethal Weapon screenwriter (and Iron Man 3 director) Shane Black. Most recently, he ran into interference from the suits at Warner Brothers, where the film is still being set up.
At Black's Long Beach Comic Con Q&A, Black noted the studio wanted to axe two of the most integral elements of the story: the demon Ryuk, the original master of the murderous Death Note; and dark protagonist Light Yagami's downward spiral into evil. In short, they wanted to remove two of the story's most distinctive and valuable elements. Black fought back and the studio relented.
There's no word on a start date for the film -- and given that Black will be busy with the far more commercially attractive Iron Man 3 for the time being, there isn't likely to be one for a bit. Naturally, no cast or other crew, apart from Black himself, have been attached to the project yet.
This won't be the first time Death Note went in front of cameras with real actors, far from it. Three live-action films based on the franchise have been made in Japan. Two of them, Death Note and Death Note II: the Last Name, cover the majority of the storyline from the manga and TV series (albeit with some key omissions from the last third or so of the story). A third, Death Note 3: L, Change the World, provided a concluding chapter to the Death Note movie saga by giving us a story of L solving a disturbing case involving bioterrorism during his last few days on earth. All three were well-done, and work on their own as a standalone, self-contained point of entry into the Death Note universe.
Be sure to check out our list of the best live-action anime adaptations out there. Here's hoping the Western Death Note makes it onto that list -- assuming it ever does get in front of cameras. And also read up on our wish list of anime to be made into live-action productions.
Image: Death Note Collection. Image courtesy Pricegrabber.
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