Death Note Movie Gets Straight Outta Compton Star

Back in April, Netflix picked up the rights to Death Note, after they expired while the project was at Warner Bros. This adaptation of the popular Japanese manga series is now moving forward, with Nat Wolff joining the cast in April. Now we have word of another casting addition, Keith Stanfield (Straight Outta Compton). No details were given for his character.

Almost exactly six years after Warner Bros. first acquired the rights to the https://movieweb.com/x-men-apocalypse-kodi-smit-mcphee-nightcrawler-photo/Japanese manga comic Death Note, Warner Bros. hired director Adam Wingard (The Guest) to take the helm last April. We reported last year that director Gus Van Sant was attached to the project, which previously had Shane Black set to direct back in 2011. Jeremy Slater (The Lazarus Effect) wrote the most recent draft of the screenplay.

The plot, based on the original manga written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, follows a student who discovers a strange notebook, which allows him to kill anyone whose name he writes in it. The student decides to rid the world of all men and women he deems to be evil, while a police officer starts tracking him down, as the bodies keep piling up. The script had been previously worked on by Charley Parlapanides and Vlas Parlapanides (Immortals) and the writing team of Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry, before Jeremy Slater came on board.

Roy Lee, Dan Lin, Jason Hoffs and Masi Oka are producing, with Doug Davison and Brian Witten serving as executive producers. Adam Wingard’s other directorial credits include A Horrible Way to Die, You’re Next and segments of horror anthology films such as V/H/S, V/H/S/2 and The ABCs of Death. Netflix hasn’t issued a release date at this time, so stay tuned.

Keith Stanfield made his feature acting debut in 2013’s Short Term 12, and went on to star in The Purge: Anarchy, Selma, Dope and the blockbuster biopic Straight Outta Compton. He most recently starred in another biopic, Miles Ahead, and he will next be seen in Snowden and Memoria. We’ll be sure to keep you posted with more on Death Note as we get closer to production starting this summer.