How Netflix's American Death Note Alters The Original Story

Netflix's upcoming adaptation of the Japanese anime/manga Death Note features the apple-loving Shinigami, Ryuk, but the rest of the characters and setting deviate from the source material. During an interview with IGN, director Adam Wingard explains how the characters and story for the U.S. version of Death Note are different.

"In the early stages of the film I was rereading all of the manga, really just looking at how does any of this translate to the United States," Wingard explained. "Ultimately, Death Note is such a Japanese thing. You can't just say let's port this over and it's going to all add up. They're two different worlds completely."

"Ultimately, whenever I say it's about America, I'm looking at it like, what are the main kind of core issues going on in America," Wingard added "What are the things that people chalk up to conspiracy theories? What kind of weird underground programs does the government have? How do I those work into the world of Death Note?"

Wingard went on to explain what themes from the original source material they focused on:

"It's one of those things where the harder I tried to stay 100 percent true to the source material, the more it just kind of fell apart… You're in a different country, you're in a different kind of environment, and you're trying to also summarize a sprawling series into a two-hour-long film. For me, it became about what do these themes mean to modern day America, and how does that affect how we tell the story. Ultimately, the cat and mouse chase between Light and L, the themes of good, evil, and what's in between the gray area. Those are the core things of Death Note, and that's really what we went for."

The original anime and manga featured Light Yagami, a student in Tokyo who finds the supernatural Death Note and uses it to kill criminals. A prodigy detective called "L" and Light enter a battle of wits. Wingard's version stars Light Turner, who also finds the Death Note and faces off with L, but it's set in Seattle, Washington. Wingard explained the differences between his characters from the original source.

"At its core, it's taking the themes of who the characters are but it's exploring them in a new context. Ultimately the personalities of the characters a quite a bit different… L isn't the same. There are a lot of similarities — he likes candy, sometimes he romps around with his shoes off. Those kinds of things, but at the end of the day the take on L and the escalation of his character is very different," Wingard said. "He's still a weirdo. It's the same for almost all the characters across the board. Probably the only character that comes off as the same way as he does in the anime is Ryuk."

Some fans are already disappointed by the changes, but given its large fanbase, I'm sure a lot of people will still check Wingard's Death Note when it hits Netflix.

The Death Note film is set to premiere on Netflix on August 25.

Related: Death Note Gets New Poster of Ryuk