Warner Bros.‘ live action adaption of the graphic novel Death Note seems to have found its leading star in Paper Towns‘ Nat Wolff.
After starring in two John Green book adaptations (The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns) the past couple summers, Wolff is moving on to the Tsugumi Obha and Takeshi Obata’s Japanese graphic novel adaptation. The film has long been in the making, but failed to settle on a director the get the project off the ground early on. Last summer, Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) was rumored to take the director’s chair, and earlier this year there were whispers of Shane Black (Iron Man 3) being attached to the project, but eventually the studio settled on Adam Wingard (The Guest).
Wolff will portray a student who discovers he can kill anyone by writing their name in a deadly notebook. Eventually, he gets noticed by a police officer who begins to track him.
Wolff was last seen in Nancy Meyer‘s The Intern – starring Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway – which opened last week. He is also starring in Ashby – now available on VOD – and co-stars in the indie-hit Grandma alongside Lily Tomlin. Recently, he also completed work on James Franco‘s latest directorial project, In Dubious Battle.
Dan Lin, Roy Lee, Jason Hoffs and Masi Oka are producing the film while Jeremy Slater (Fantastic Four) wrote the latest draft of the script. At the moment, no other roles for the film have been cast.
Death Note is set to begin shooting next spring.