With
Ghost in the Shell effectively dead in the water, attention is now turning to another high-profile Western anime adaptation, Netflix's
Death Note. Buzzfeed recently interviewed the film's Korean-American producer, Roy Lee, who noted that times are certainly different from when he produced other Asian-remakes like
The Ring (2002),
The Grudge (2004) and
The Departed (2006).
"
I’ve been involved in many adaptations of content from all over the world, and this is the first time that I’ve been seeing negative press," said Lee on the bad press many Asian remakes are encountering. He continued, "
I can understand the criticism ... if our version of Death Note was set in Japan and [featured] characters that were Japanese-named or of Japanese ancestry. It is an interpretation of that story in a different culture, so there are going to be some obvious changes. Some people will like them, some people may not."
For his own film, Lee thinks fans might sing a different tune once they actually see it. "
People can criticize it, but I'd say that they should see the movie first. Then they could accuse us of not having a diverse enough cast … just judge the movie after it comes out."
One popular argument popping up online is that films like The Grudge (a remake of Ju-on: The Grudge) and The Departed (a remake of Internal Affairs) were not depicting elements that were inherently steeped in Japanese culture. Whereas Death Note is founded on the existence and belief in shinigami which is innately a Japanese cultural byproduct with no counterpart in Western civilization. When you strip down the story to its most basic element, the intricacies of the manga/anime (such as the inner workings of the Japanese judicial system) can't be saved and a bit of the source material's magic is lost along the way. The question then becomes can the remake introduce new Western elements that are just as interesting as captivating as the aspects of the original that get lost in translation.
Death Note will begin streaming on Netflix August 25.
ABOUT NETFLIX'S DEATH NOTE SERIES
Directed by Adam Wingard (You're Next), the writing duo of Charles & Vlas Parlapanides (Immortals) and Jeremy Slater (The Lazarus Effect, unused Fantastic Four script) penned the most recent draft of the script. The full cast includes, Nat Wolff as Light Turner, Keith Stanfield as L, Shea Whigham (Boardwalk Empire) as James Turner, Paul Nakauchi (Star Wars: The Clone Wars) as Watar, Willem Dafoe as Ryuki and Margaret Qualley (The Leftovers) as Mia Sutton.
ORIGINAL MANGA SYNOPSIS: A shinigami, as a god of death, can kill any person—provided they see their victim's face and write their victim's name in a notebook called a Death Note. One day, Ryuk, bored by the shinigami lifestyle and interested in seeing how a human would use a Death Note, drops one into the human realm.
High school student and prodigy Light Yagami stumbles upon the Death Note and—since he deplores the state of the world—tests the deadly notebook by writing a criminal's name in it. When the criminal dies immediately following his experiment with the Death Note, Light is greatly surprised and quickly recognizes how devastating the power that has fallen into his hands could be.
With this divine capability, Light decides to extinguish all criminals in order to build a new world where crime does not exist and people worship him as a god. Police, however, quickly discover that a serial killer is targeting criminals and, consequently, try to apprehend the culprit. To do this, the Japanese investigators count on the assistance of the best detective in the world: a young and eccentric man known only by the name of L.
Death Note is a 2003 Japanese manga from writer Tsugumi Ohba and artist Takeshi Obata. The series concluded in 2006 at 12 volumes. An anime adaptation began airing in 2006 and concluded in 2007 at 37 episodes. A live-action Japanese film trilogy was first released in theaters in 2006, with the third and final film releasing in 2008. A new Japanese film, Death Note: Light Up the New World, will tell an original story set 10 years after the conclusion of the first trilogy. Hollywood has been attempting to make their own live-action Death Note film since 2007. Warner Bros. acquired film rights in 2009 and hired Shane Black to direct in 2011. However, the project languished in development hell at WB, who let their rights lapse. Netflix secured filming rights in April 2016 and quickly set the project into production.