Greg Russo Reveals Netflix's Live Action DEATH NOTE Sequel Will Be a More Faithful Adaptation

Writer Greg Russo is making his way around a lot of projects. After finishing Mortal Kombat and starting work on Space Invaders and Saints Row, he still manages to find time for the next adaptation of the manga/anime franchise of Death Note.

The first live-action film was not well received by most fans and sits at 38% on Rotten Tomatoes. I personally didn’t like the changes to Light, the general plot, and tone. But, we hear some promising news from Greg Russo in an interview with We Got This Covered:

It’s funny, because it sounds like a shift in genre but really, it comes down to the same things. It’s about adapting IP. It’s about bringing over an amazing piece of fan property and trying to do it right. And Death Note, I’m a huge fan of the manga, I’m a huge fan of the original source material and I think it’s one of the greatest mangas ever written. And so for me, I didn’t play any role in Death Note, the first film that Netflix did, but I came in with kind of a point of view with what I wanted to do in a sequel. And part of that is I wanted to go back to the source material. I wanted to go back to what made the original stuff so great, and so we’re doing something really neat with it. Hopefully there will be more info on it soon, but it’s going to be… it’s not going to be exactly what you’re expecting. And I mean that in a very enticing way.

While he isn’t specific in the changes in style/tone/direction of the second film, his desire to go back to the original manga shows where this is headed. Could we see the appearance of Near or Mello? Will Light actually be a smart and compelling character? Will L eat more candy? We can only speculate and hope that he with be able to be more faithful to the source material like what he is doing with the Mortal Kombat film (going off what we’ve seen from the trailers, obviously).

Check out the full interview here and let us know what you’d want to see (or not want to see) from the next live-action Death Note film.