The first trailer for Bright wasn’t all that Netflix brought to its Thursday, July 20 movie panel at San Diego Comic-Con. It also brought a clip from Death Note featuring Willem Dafoe’s terrifying death god, Ryuk.
Directed by Buy Now and Buy Now filmmaker Adam Wingard, Death Note casts Nat Wolff (The Fault in Our Stars) as Light Turner, a Seattle high school student who comes into possession of a mysterious notebook that grants its owner the power to kill anyone whose name he writes in it. As Light soon discovers, the notebook was the property of a death god (known as “shinigami” in Japanese culture) named Ryuk, and the book’s prior owner is more than happy to see what Light will do with it.
More than just a simple horror or revenge tale, Death Note is based on Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s acclaimed manga series of the same name, which chronicled Light’s rise to power along with the efforts of a mysterious figure known simply as “L” who’s tasked with uncovering the killer’s identity.
Death Note has taken almost a decade to get to the screen as an English-language, live-action film, but was previously adapted into an acclaimed 37-episode anime series, as well as a trilogy of Japanese-language, live-action movies. That trilogy had a brief theatrical release in North America, and the series also inspired multiple video games, tie-in novels, and a 2015 stage musical. The original manga series sold more than 30 million copies as of 2015.
Earlier in the English-language film’s development, directors Shane Black and Gus Van Sant were each attached to helm the project at various points. Both directors exited the film, and original studio Warner Bros. Pictures also dropped the film in April 2016 right before it began production. Wingard was given permission to take it elsewhere, and Death Note was quickly picked up by Netflix. The first trailer for Death Note was released in March 2017.
Along with Wolff and Dafoe, the cast of Death Note includes Margaret Qualley ( Buy Now ) as Mia Sutton, Keith Stanfield ( Buy Now ) as the eccentric “L,” Paul Nakauchi ( Buy Now ) as Watari, and Shea Whigham ( Buy Now ) as James Turner.
Death Note is produced by Roy Lee (The Ring, The Departed), Dan Lin (The LEGO Movie, Sherlock Holmes), Jason Hoffs (Edge of Tomorrow), and Masi Oka (Heroes, Hawaii Five-O).
The live-action Death Note movie will premiere August 25 on Netflix.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.