What would you do if you found a mysterious supernatural notebook, within which was the chilling instruction: “The human whose name is written in this note shall die.” After being granted power over life and death, who would you consign to a coffin? Your personal enemies? America’s most wanted? That asshole who cut in line at the coffee shop?
Questions like these will be familiar to fans of Tsugami Ohba’s Death Note, which first appeared in 2003 in manga magazine Weekly Shonen Jump, and was subsequently adapted into an anime TV series between 2006 and 2007 and a series of successful live-action movies. But though Death Note is renowned by manga/anime fans, it’s little known by the public at large. Netflix is looking to change that though, with their live-action adaptation of the series due for release in a scant few months.
Directed by horror impresario Adam Wingard (whose The Guest is a seriously underrated gem) and starring Nat Wolff and Margaret Qually, I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. Now, courtesy of some eagle-eyed fans at the 2017 Licensing Expo, we have a new poster to pore over. As you can see below, it isn’t going to be winning any graphic design awards anytime soon, but it does give us bit more insight into Wingard’s aesthetic for the film.
As far as I can tell, it’s an extension of his luridly colored palette seen in previous efforts, in much the same style as Nicholas Winding-Refn. If he can equal what he’s done before (we’ll ignore Blair Witch for the moment), then Death Note should be one to catch.
