According to Deadline, Netflix has just announced that Halia Abdel-Meguid (Miss Annity, Adamantine) will write and executive produce the streaming service’s latest adaptation of the widely beloved manga and anime series, Death Note. This marks the second time that Netflix will be tackling a Death Note project, following their critically panned 2017 film adaptation starring Nat Wolff (The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns) and Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man, The Lighthouse).
This newest live-action series adaptation of Death Note is currently one of the many projects in development by Upside Down, the recently launched production company of Matt and Ross Duffer, co-creators of the hit cultural phenomenon and Netflix original series, Stranger Things.
This will be the third overall project that Abdel-Meguid will be working on this year following her work on Hulu’s adaptation of the murder-mystery novel, The Devil in the White City, and her second project with the Upside Down team after the series adaptation of Stephen King and Peter Straub’s book, The Talisman.
According to Deadline, Abdel-Meguid is a long time fan of the Death Note franchise who speaks Japanese and also previously lived in Tokyo. The original manga and anime focused on Light Yagami, a brilliant young man who one day stumbles across a mysterious notebook titled Death Note and discovers that he has the ability to kill any person just by writhing their name in the book. Deadline writes that Netflix’s new series adaptation of Death Note will not be influenced by their 2017 film, but will instead be a wholly original spin on the acclaimed manga and anime.
However, several producers of the 2017 adaptation are also slated to work on this latest series, including Dan Lin (Sherlock Holmes, Godzilla vs. Kong) and Roy Lee (The Ring, How to Train Your Dragon) as executive producers with Jonathan Eirich (The Two Popes, Aladdin) and Miri Yoon (Don’t Worry Darling, Infinite Storm) as co-executive producers.