Like all entertainment franchises that have ever been described as phenomenal, Death Note has had no shortage of adaptations. Born as a 12-volume Japanese manga series (2003-2006), Death Note has since been adapted into an anime series, five live-action Japanese films, a TV drama and a musical.
Netflix added to that list late last month with the release of their internally produced Death Note adaptation, directed by Adam Wingard, starring Nat Wolff, Margaret Qualley and Lakeith Stanfield. Taking place in America (instead of the original Japan), the film revolves around teenagers Light Turner (Wolff) and Mia Sutton (Qualley), who receive a special notebook -- the titular Death Note -- that has the power to kill anyone simply by having their name written in it. The two then form the alter-ego Kira, using the Note to kill anyone they deem harmful to the world.
With a legacy as rich and celebrated as Death Note's, Netflix's films have big shoes to fill, to say the least. Life recently spoke to the director and cast members of the film about their respective roles, as well as the differences fans of the original can expect from this latest adaptation.
How is this interpretation of Death Note different from those of the past?
Wingard: Death Note is one of those things that has been interpreted through different mediums. Obviously the anime is an interpretation, and then there's the Japanese films, even a musical. It's been very fully explored, so the whole reason we made this film is to kind of say, 'Well, what happens when you set Death Note in America, and what does that mean?'.
The differences are probably too many for me to just explain right here. For instance, Light -- in comparison to how he is portrayed in the original anime -- in this version is almost, like, split into two characters. I've always thought of the original Light as a combination of the two characters Light and Mia. Instead of the Note being given to one kid and we see how he changes the world with that, this film is almost more about what happens when this young couple takes the Note and they literally give birth to Kira themselves. That's probably the biggest difference -- it's about this tragic teenage romance mixed into everything else.
How did you shorten 12 manga issues into a 90-minute movie?
Wingard: What we did is we decided not to just create a diluted version of the manga. We didn't really try to fit all 12 volumes into one film. We took inspiration from just the first two volumes, making the film very much an origin story. These characters are already so complicated, the situation is already complex enough, and it would have been too much to just jam everything in. We tried to just concentrate on this origin story, knowing that down the line, if this was popular and we did our job correctly, there could be sequels, and we could explore the rest of the material further.
What was it like to portray the kind of extreme moral ideology that drives a character like Light or Mia?
Wolff: Light starts off as a character who sees everything in black and white. To him, it is simply that these people are good, and these people are bad. Then he meets Mia, and due to his attraction to her, he starts to bend his morality a little bit, as she kind of pushes him in a more extreme direction. There's also this sort of competition going on between the two, as they try to one-up each other and show each other that they are the better Kira. Like a lot of relationships, they come to a head, and the way it resolves in the film is very shocking.
Qualley: In a way, I think Mia most certainly loves Light. However, she is also the type of character that has such strong convictions on what she believes is right, which is much more important to her than a romantic relationship, which ends up driving a wedge between their two ideologies for Kira.
Wolff: Portraying the character was really fun, as the two characters start off as two dumb teenagers. When they argue about the Death Note, it's almost like two people arguing about being late to a date. By the end, as the stakes get higher and higher, and things start to get scarier and scarier, they begin to have differing views on what Kira should be, and that's a great dynamic to add to their relationship.
The eccentric L is perhaps the most popular character in Death Note. What are you bringing to the character to make him new?
Stanfield: I fell in love with the original L in the manga and anime, and I wanted to make sure to preserve some of the more eccentric aspects of the character and expand upon them in a whole new film universe. So I made sure to keep intact some of his signature actions -- the way he sits, the way he picks things up. I try to keep as much of the original intact and expand upon that. Most people fell in love with the original character, so I figured if I could keep those things, everyone would be happy.
You mentioned that there is the possibility of a sequel. What direction would this sequel take?
Wingard: The sequel could go in a number of different directions. I wouldn't want to give something away in terms of where I want to ultimately go with that, but I will say that it will be very interesting to explore L's background deeper while also moving the story further.
What's cool about this film is that unlike a lot of films that are based on comic-book properties and the like, this is one that ends in a really dark place. All the characters have gone through a very big change, and I think that would be a good place to start a sequel, where everyone is at their lowest point.
The film was originally picked up by Warner Bros., long before it was brought to Netflix. How much of the script changed after the transition?
Wingard: There were already things we wanted to address in the screenplay, and that's what we did. But if anything, we were able to make the film even closer to the vision we had in our head after coming to Netflix. There's a chance that if the film stayed with WB, we could've been pushed around or censored in different ways, so in a lot of ways the transition to Netflix produced an even more pure version of our film. Fortunately, Netflix always believed in what we wanted to do, so they didn't ask us to change anything.
