Warner Brothers acquire live-action Death Note rights

[Roy Mustang]

ANN

The American film studio Warner Brothers has acquired the rights to adapt Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's Death Note supernatural suspense manga series into a live-action film. In the manga, a teenager finds a notebook with which he can put people to death by writing their names. He begins a self-anointed crusade against the criminals of the world, and a cat-and-mouse game begins with the authorities and one idiosyncratic genius detective. In the proposed film version, the main character is described as a college student, and the story will cover the first three of the 13 manga volumes.

Vertigo Entertainment (no relation to DC Comics' Vertigo imprint or the United Kingdom's Vertigo Films) revealed last year that it was developing a remake with screenwriters Vlas and Charles Parlapanides. The two brothers remain attached to the project. Vertigo's Roy Lee (The Lake House, Shutter) and Doug Davison (Dark Water, The Lake House), Lin Pictures' Dan Lin (This Side of the Truth, Sherlock Holmes), and Brian Witten (executive producer of Final Destination, 2009's Friday the 13th) are also attached as producers. The manga has already been adapted into three live-action films and one television anime series in Japan.

Vertigo Entertainment has developed or is developing remakes of Ju-on (The Grudge), Dark Water, Nankyoku Monogatari (Eight Below), Siworae (The Lake House), Infernal Affairs (The Departed), Gin gwai (The Eye), Shutter, My Sassy Girl, Jungdok (Possession), Sigaw (The Echo), and Janghwa, Hongryeon (The Uninvited). The Parlapanides brothers were writers and executive producers of Undercover, an update of the 21 Jump Street television series which was under development for The CW network. They also wrote the War of the Gods film (in pre-production) for Relativity Media and Live Bet for Universal Pictures.

I thought it was already acquired by an American film studio?

[font="Book Antiqua"][color="Red"]Col. Roy Mustang[/color][/font]

[minakichan]

It was acquired by Vertigo and assigned directors there, but Warner Bros took it.

Warner did the Japanese version. Obviously, nothing will really be the same in the American version, so there's no reason to believe it will inherently be better or worse just because of the studio and country of origin.

*FINGERS CROSSED!*

As sad as it is, this announcement made the Death Note LJ comm scream "OH NO THEY'RE CASTING ZAC EFRON AS LIGHT!!!" Give it a rest, geez.

[Fantasy Dreamer]

This is starting to become a pandemic. *sigh* What's wrong with leaving them as animes/mangas, I ask you that!

If they can do it well, its fine, but if they do the same thing they did for DB Evolution.... well, its better off just left alone.

[~darkelfgirl~]

This is starting to become a pandemic. *sigh* What's wrong with leaving them as animes/mangas, I ask you that!

If they can do it well, its fine, but if they do the same thing they did for DB Evolution.... well, its better off just left alone.

Agree.

I actually kind of have hope for this one, though.

[battletech]

The live- action japanese movie is already good .
Why do they have to make a different version?

[Aka-chan]

I feel like there is no way this is going to do the manga justice, so I'm at least hoping for something entertainingly bad. Basically I will only see it if Zac Efron is Light because that would be hilarious, though I realize it would make a lot of other people mad. (Which may be why it would be hilarious to me.) Not that the Japanese live action versions were good, either, and they could maybe improve some of the cg and effects like that with a Hollywood budget.