Script leaked for US live-action remake of Death Note? And more remakes to come!

Thanks to LiveActionAnime for reporting the following news:

News of an American Death Note LAA has been kicking about for a while, and now it appears that a draft of the movie’s script, penned by Charley and Vlas Parlapanides, has been leaked online. You can check it out at this link:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/g3rwun

It’s labelled “First Draft”, dated April 7th, 2009, and copyrighted to Warner Bros. This is, obviously unofficial, but judging by the presentation and general quality, it certainly appears to be genuine. Apart from transposing the action to America and removing Ryuk from the proceedings, it’s also remarkably faithful in spirit to the original source material. Watch this space.

The rights to an American adaption are held by Warners Brothers. Several other popular anime are in talks or confirmed to be going ahead with a US live-action remake, including the classic series Neon Genesis Evangelion and also Bubblegum Crisis, and a live-action remake of Dragonball was released this April.

Death Note is an extremely popular anime series that has also had three live-action films in its native Japan which were box-office hits. The story revolves around a genius high-school aged boy, Light Yagami, who finds a notebook dropped by a Shinigami (God of Death) in which anybody whose name he writes will die.

At first he uses it to write the names of criminals, and as he finds himself being hunted down by his nemesis L for playing God and taking the law into his own hands, he begins to use this power for more… Death Note boasts a deeply philosophical storyline that questions capital punishment and the concept of right-and-wrong, but also has its comedic moments (provided by Ryuk, the apple-loving God of Death) and provides plenty of focus for intellectual conversations between its fans – it’s always surprising to find who supports Light and who supports L! A definite recommendation for anime fans, and it will certainly be interesting to see how the US handles its entry in this series.