It stars Nat Wolff, LaKeith Stanfield, Margaret Qualley, Shea Whigham, Paul Nakauchi, Jason Liles, and Willem Dafoe.

In July 2022, it was announced that the Duffer Brothers' recently founded Upside Down Pictures production company would be producing a new live-action series adaptation for Netflix.

[2][3][4] In Seattle, Washington, high school senior student Light Turner stumbles upon the Death Note, a mysterious and ancient notebook that can supernaturally kill any person whose name is written in it.

He then meets Ryuk—a Japanese death god who conducts the killings—and is convinced by him to begin using it; Light writes down the name of his school bully Kenny Doyle and watches him die in a freak accident.

At school, Light befriends fellow student Mia Sutton and shows her the notebook's power by meticulously engineering the death of an armed felon during a televised hostage situation.

The two start dating and work together to rid the world of criminals and terrorists, with Light adopting the Japanese pseudonym "Kira" to mislead law enforcement away from his continent.

Enigmatic international detective L begins investigating Kira's identity in Tokyo and deduces that he is from Seattle, and also indirectly concludes that he cannot kill without knowing his victims' names and faces.

Distraught, Light returns to Mia and discovers that she caused the agents' suicide and, because only one victim can be saved, withheld Watari's page; Mia tells Light that she has written his name in the Death Note and is set to kill him at midnight, citing his supposed lack of conviction in Kira's cause, though she subsequently offers to burn his page if he surrenders the notebook to her.

[6] Christopher Britton—who played Soichiro Yagami, James Turner's original counterpart from the manga, in the English dub of the Death Note anime—makes a cameo appearance as Aaron Peltz, a serial child molester and one of Light's victims.

[7] The American production company Vertigo Entertainment was originally set to develop the remake, with Charley and Vlas Parlapanides as screenwriters and Roy Lee, Doug Davison, Dan Lin, and Brian Witten as producers.

[14] On April 27, 2015, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Adam Wingard would direct the film, that Lin, Lee, Jason Hoffs, and Masi Oka would produce, and that Niija Kuykendall and Nik Mavinkurve would oversee the studio.

[30] Early casting announcements, similar to other Hollywood productions based on Japanese manga such as Dragonball Evolution and Ghost in the Shell, resulted in accusations of whitewashing.

[31][32] In response, producers Roy Lee and Dan Lin stated: "Our vision for Death Note has always been to...introduce the world to this dark and mysterious masterpiece.

The talent and diversity represented in our cast, writing, and producing teams reflect our belief in staying true to the story's concept of moral relevance—a universal theme that knows no racial boundaries.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Death Note benefits from director Adam Wingard's distinctive eye and a talented cast, but they aren't enough to overcome a fatally overcrowded canvas.

[39] Jeanette Catsoulis for The New York Times wrote that the film "feels rushed and constricted" compared to the volume of the source material, but praised how Wingard's direction focused on "mood over mayhem" to make the adaptation his own.

[41] Brian Tallerico for Rogerebert.com gave the film one of four stars, stating that the changes that Wingard had made from the original work did not serve any artistic or thematic purpose, nor captured the cat-and-mouse game between Light and L that was core to the original work, and because the producers "refused to make Light the antihero he needed to be", the addition of Mia as a love interest "[left] the project hollow at its center" — but mainly praised the performances of Stanfield and Dafoe.