A Face We Know: Adam Wingard Scribbles in Keith Stanfield & Palo Alto’s Duo for “Death Note”

Adam Wingard‘s Death Note appears to have had some short lived growing pains to sort out as The Wrap reports that Netflix beat out several distribs (after Warner Bros. put the project in turnaround) and have interestingly lined-up Nat Wolff in the lead alongside his Palo Alto co-star Margaret Qualley and possibly, Keith Stanfield. Roy Lee, Dan Lin, Jason Hoffs and Masi Oka are tapped to produce.

Gist: Written by Jeremy Slater and based on the 2003 Manga series by Takeshi Obata, the story, set in a major metropolitan American city, centers on a student (Wolff) who, after discovering a supernatural notebook that allows him to kill anyone by writing the victim’s name, decides to cleanse the world of whom he deems evil. As the student is tracked by a reclusive police officer, a cat-and-mouse game ensues.

Worth Noting: Shûsuke Kaneko’s 2006 Death Note was just the beginning of a franchise that has spawned a large creative output which includes a TV Series, videogames and further manga titles.

Do We Care?: Coming off his career best in The Guest (our Nicholas Bell proclaimed that it was “sleek, fun entertainment, a reminder of a bygone era when an influx of entertaining genre films existed in greater quantity,” we’re a little bit more enthused by his next indie project The Woods (which should land sometime this year) over his first foray into studio budgeted item.