Promised Neverland, the hit Japanese comic also known as ‘manga’, is set to be adapted into a live-action series. Although manga can come in many different genres, the action-and-adventure story of Promised Neverland will be translated to English and produced by Fox 21 and Amazon Studios, according to Deadline.
Rodney Rothman, writer and director of Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, joins the project as a director and executive producer in collaboration with Vertigo Entertainment. In addition, Masi Oka (Heroes) will serve as an executive producer alongside Roy Lee (The Ring) and Miri Moon of Vertigo Entertainment. Meghan Malloy (The Jungle Book) will write the pilot episode, which allows her to join Rothman, the other half of her Spider-Man duo.
This will not be Oka and Lee’s first time working on a manga project together. In 2017, Lee produced anime series Death Note with Lee and Dan Lin (The Lego Movie) for Netflix, via Deadline. Oka has other prior experience in manga adaptation as he developed the drama Repeat for CBS. Both Death Note and Repeat were Kurumi Inui manga.
The series is written by Kaiu Shirai (Poppy’s Wish) and illustrated by Posuka Demizu. Promised Neverland “follows a group of the smartest kids at a seemingly idyllic orphanage uncover its dark truth when they break a rule to never leave the orphanage grounds. Once the truth is discovered, they begin to plan an escape to save all of the children,” via Deadline.
The manga series has been serialized, or published in regular installments, with Weekly Shōnen Jump since August 2016 and has sold over 20M copies worldwide. In 2018, the manga won the 63rd Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category, which is manga that has a young, teen male target audience. Promised Neverland was then licensed by Viz Media and serialized for the digital Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. The tankōbon (individual) chapters of the Promised Neverland manga were gathered and published in volumes by Shueisha in January 2020.
Although there are no hints about who may be cast in the live-action Promised Neverland series yet, all 12 episodes of the 2019 animated series can be streamed on Hulu. The trailer for the series can also be seen below.