Following the success of You’re Next and last year’s The Guest, Adam Wingard has become a man in demand. He’s already got several projects in development and has now been hired by Warner Bros. to make the adaptation of horror manga **Death Note{
Wingard takes over the project from Shane Black, who was attached in 2011 but is now putting his energy into other things. Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s work focuses on Japanese high school student Light Yagami, who comes across a handy notebook penned by the death god Ryuk, which allows its owner to kill anyone he pleases by writing their name in the book and picturing their face. Light decides to use his newfound power to rid the world of evil, and the series follows his progress, and that of the cops on his trail. Killing in the name of altruism is all very well, but the police still don’t like it much.
Death Note has sold millions of copies in Japan, and has been no slouch in translation either (although it’s banned in China to “protect the physical and mental health” of its target audience). There have already been live-action and anime adaptations, but weirdly Warner Bros., who picked up the rights early in 2010, plan to have their Hollywood live-action version differ from those by actually being more faithful to the source material.
The adaptation, however, is still a ways off: Wingard and regular collaborator Simon Barrett are preparing to shoot their next film,** The Woods, this summer.