The Press Box - 'Death Note’ Director Adam Wingard on Building Monsters and Hollywood Whitewashing Controversies (Ep. 345)

Episode Date: August 25, 2017

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey and Justin Charity chat about the Netflix film ‘Death Note’ and the difficulties of adapting anime (1:00). Then Sean sits down with director Adam Wingard to discuss how he went from scraping by to directing large-scale projects like ‘Death Note’ and the forthcoming ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ (13:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, are you watching Talk the Thrones? All season long, Andy Greenwald, our mother of dragons, Mallory Rubin, Chris Ryan, and our very own maister, Jason Concepcion, have been coming to you live after the East Coast airings of Game of Thrones season 7. They're going to continue with the season finale this Sunday. Talk the Throne streams exclusively on Twitter and Periscope right after Game of Thrones ends and can be found on the ringer's Twitter handle. That's At Ringer. They'll be reacting at the same time as you, contextualizing the events, and explaining what just happened.

Again, the show is called Talk the Thrones, and you can stream it live after the East Coast airing of Game of Thrones on our Twitter and Periscope. The Ringer. What else are you doing on Sunday night? That's the funny thing is I thought there's no way this is going to happen. This is a rated R movie about a Magic Notebook and you know, it's a big budget, relatively speaking. My name is Sean Fennessey. I'm the editor-in-chief of the Ringer

and here's the big picture. Today we have an exciting and interesting show. I'm joined by the director Adam Wingard, probably best known for his horror films including movies like Year Next, the recent Blair Witch remake, and now he has a somewhat controversial, somewhat fascinating, new

adaptation called Death Note coming to Netflix on August 25th. Wengard is a developing filmmaker who is taking a leap into big IP. But before I chat with Adam, I've asked a ringer staffer and anime expert to join me to talk about what Death Note is, where it fits in the pantheon of anime history, and just sort of how successful this movie is and what it could have done better and what it does really well. So I'm joined by Justin Charity. Justin, thank you for joining me. Sean, hello. How are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me on to talk about anime. I know. I know it's one of your passions and that's why I'm happy that you're here. So death note is a very interesting story with a unique premise. I'm hoping you can

explain the premise of this story to us before we get into the movie and the different permutations we've seen in culture before. Sure. It's actually, I feel like it's pretty straightforward for how bizarre it gets, but the death note, the titular death note is basically a notebook and it falls in the main character like Yagami's lap basically from the sky. And what the death note is is a notebook where you can write basically anyone's full name with the condition that you recognize their face. You can write anyone's full name and that person will die. And Death Note sort of as an original manga series and as an anime TV series that's based on the manga

is basically about what the character Light Yagami chooses to do with that death note and who he chooses to target with that power. So where did this story originate? When did it first come into the world? And then how did it change? What were the different iterations we've seen? Well, so the original death note is a manga series, a comic series that ran in Weekly Shonen Jump in Japan.

Right. And it ran from 2003, I want to say to 2006. So it ran for a lot of volumes, three years. And the TV series is sort of the, I'd say in the U.S., right, the TV series is the sort of more popular version just because more people in the U.S. watch anime than read manga. But I'd say that both the manga and the television show are both pretty beloved. And the anime is already pretty different from the manga, but there is also, I believe, a novelization of Death Note. and now there's this movie. And there are live action movies in Japan, too, of Death Note.

And they're all, like, slightly different from each other. They have a different flavor from one another a little bit. But the main plot beats are generally the same. So I know that you're a big fan of this. Where does the story rank sort of in the Ghost in the Shell, Akira, a lineup of, you know, very famous, very somewhat controversially adapted anime stories? I would say Death Note is sort of in contrast with things like Ghost in the Shell,

like Ghost in the Shell and Akira that you just mentioned because, okay, so Ghost in the Shell and Akira, right? Those are films and they are specifically, I want to say, classic middlebrow anime features. Yes, this is why you're here to degrade those people who love Akira. No, no, no, no, no. I love Akira. I used to not like Kira, but I love Akira. But those are sort of definitively middlebrow sort of like interesting sort of art movies in a way, whereas Death Note is a very populist. Let's talk about the anime for a second, the TV version of Death Note. It's a very populous, accessible, sort of teen friendly, even though it's very dark. But it's sort of, it's just a more populist thing. It's a more populous series. I want to say it's one of the most beloved anime series

of the 2000s, which is when both the manga and the anime series ran. But there's sort of, I want to say, on that second tier of anime classics, like it's a very millennial anime classic. But it is, as a television show. It's pretty procedural and it's pretty simple and it's not as sort of artistically ambitious as maybe other other anime series I can think of from that time period. So I want to unpack a couple of things there. I remember when Netflix announced that they had picked up the rights to Wingard's death note and you and your colleague, sometimes nemesis, Michael Peters, both had a lot of feelings about this. You guys were both fans of the TV series. You were familiar with the manga. and you, I think, both identified too, that this story has a little bit of a, it's a little flexible because it's been a television series in the past and the notion of killing a character in each episode lends itself to a different kind of storytelling.

Doing it in movie form, I think kind of redefines it. Not to mention, I believe every iteration of this story previously has featured only Japanese characters. So bringing in an American filmmaker and casting a more diverse group of actors, to portray the characters in the story, creates some level of controversy. I think that this has been somewhat better handled thus far than the Ghost in the Shell controversy, which you wrote about on the ringer.

But I wanted to kind of get your perspective on the Americanization of stories like this and particularly what you think about this one. Yeah, it's weird. I think at face value, the appeal of adapting Death Note is a bit more clear, sort of defensible than Ghost in the Shell,

just in the sense that to me, It's just the cat and mouse drama on its sort of fundamental level. And there are definitely storylines in it. And I think characterizations and tropes that are uniquely Japanese and that you will sort of recognize a lot if you are familiar with a lot of anime or a lot of other Japanese narrative art. I think Keith Stanfield's character is one of one of the most Japanese things in the movie, even though he's black in Wingard's. Yeah, we should say he plays sort of the detective figure who's pursuing the true identity of light who is killing people, right? Right. Correct. I mean, I think death note's done a better job handling sort of a backlash to its casting of not very many Asian actors than Ghost in the Shell. But only because Ghost in the Shell was a huge, I mean, it was a relatively large project, right? And also because Ghost in the Shell is this huge sort of milestone in, in, um, anime feature films.

Whereas I think, you know, like I was saying before, Death Note is a sort of more low-key hit. The stakes are a little bit lower and the profile is a little bit lower and the material is a bit more malleable. And I think those three things initially were such that like, I'm surprised that there was a backlash to the casting at all, honestly. I find you to be somewhat skeptical of outrage culture in general, though this is an interesting version of it, right?

because you're very sensitive to it because you're a fan of a lot of the source material and I think you have a pretty sharp mind about these things. When you first heard about this, how did your brain react? Are you like, I'm excited? I'm looking forward to seeing this movie

or were you like, I've got my guard up and I'm ready to sharpen my take? Well, it's funny because the pace of online, right, is such that I heard about the movie and I saw the backlash play out basically simultaneously because it was instant. It was instant. I think it's because Nat Wolf is the first person you really see. Matt Wolf plays light. Yeah. Nat Wolf plays light. He's the lead. There are other

non-white actors in the film, but because Nat Wolf is the lead and he's the first one you see in the trailer, you know, the backlash started immediately. And I think my first response to seeing a first couple of articles that talked about whitewashing was you have to ignore that Keith Stanfield, in the movie playing L is black. You have to ignore Paul Nakahucci. You have to ignore Masioka. You have to ignore people.

You have to basically ignore the non-white people in the movie to accuse the movie of being white in the same way that Ghost in the Shell was very largely white. Sands beat Takeshi. And so I was kind of irritated, to be honest with you,

to see articles basically calling Keith Stanfield, is not white, white by accusing the film of whitewashing. Because Keith Stanfield's playing a large character. I mean, in the original death note, right? The original death note, sort of the main arc that people are really referring to when they talk about death note and what the arc that Adam Wingard focuses on in this movie is the light versus L arc. It is that rivalry. And so at least going in, it's sort of like, well, Keith Stanfield is half. of this movie. And so it is a strange thing to accuse this movie of whitewashing when half of this

movie is Keith Sandfield. Yeah, I think it's notable to the five of the seven producers on the film, I think, are of Japanese descent. And there is obviously been a very conscious decision here to make this a story set in America featuring a cast that is not Japanese. And, you know, Adam and I talked about that a bit. I think it's been interesting to see how it's been received because, like you say, there is this desire to immediately use the word whitewashing. It has a very splashy blog headline word that lacks some nuance. But having said all that, what did you actually think of the execution of the story containing it inside of a movie and then the way that they use some of the source material to tell this version? Okay, so it's tricky, right? Remember a second ago I said

Death Note is a bit more populous and it's a bit more procedural. So a problem that creates is that it's really procedural, right? It's, there's a reason why Death Note I think has this huge fandom both in a serialized mango form and in a serialized television form. It's because so many episodes of the show are just sort of this endless voiceover back and forth between Light and L who aren't actually talking but are sort of squinting and being like, what's his next move and things like that? And condensing that down to a movie, a live action movie where you sort of strip out a lot of the sort of head talk voiceover, but also where you have.

have to really condense a lot of cliffhangers into a single movie. It's pretty rough. It's a bit rough in this movie. I think my favorite things about this movie, though, the fact that the first 20 minutes, right, when it's when they're setting up the concept of the death note, which is kind of like, it's just very fantastical and kind of ridiculous, right? The movie just leans into it and it does not, like, you really have to watch this movie with absolute suspension of disbelief, which is the thing I think that more directors who want to adapt anime need to do. So that's the main thing I respect about this movie is just that like a director came to an anime property and said, this is a cool concept.

We're going to do it. We're not going to sort of be kind of tepid about it and be like, how can we make it more realistic and accessible? It's like, nope. Death Note. It's a notebook. It falls from the sky. You write people's names in it.

They die. Go with it. Yeah. It's not cheekier arch either. You know, and we see Ryu, which we should, the character we should talk about who is the demon who has created the death note who is played by Willem Defoe in the film. It's played pretty straight. It's played like you've got to get, you got to buy into this concept. And if you don't, you're not going to be able to watch this any further.

But if you do, there are parts of it that can be really rewarding. Right. You know what? It's a thing that distinguishes a lot of anime from a lot of things that aren't anime is just the sort of the standards of realism. Right. And to me, this movie definitely gets that. It gets that, like, you can't be hung up on the idea that, like, realism is an important priority in the thing they're watching because the movie's just going to leave you behind. So, yeah, I appreciate that much about the movie.

And I also, you're talking about Ryuk, who's played by Willem Defoe, who has a very specific kind of voice. He does. Some might say a little too similar to the voice he used. to portray the Green Goblin in the Spider-Man films, which I have heard before, including from our producer, Zach Mack. But in a way, it's really effective, right? The way that he applies it works for the story. Yeah, I mean, it's especially evocative of the original English dub of Ryuk in the anime series two.

He basically talks like Willam DeVoe doing the Green Gondon. Oh, interesting. I didn't know that. So it's, and I watch the English dub when I watch Death Note. So, yeah, if any, I mean, I totally get that comparison, but I also felt like Defoe is really nailing, nailing Riuke. Justin, I appreciate you bridging the gap between anime ignoramus like me and the public at large. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you.

And now here's my conversation with Adam Wingard. Adam, thank you so much for coming in today, man. Thank you. So this is based on a well-known manga and TV series in Japan. Were you a fan for many years before this? When did it first come into your life? Yeah, I'd heard about it for a while, and I'd, you know, just like rumblings on it. And, you know, my impression of it is I thought at first it was more like a J-Harr type of thing.

You know, I grew up like watching a lot of anime and reading a lot of manga and stuff. But it had been quite a few years since I had really kind of caught up on what was really going on in that world. And it was kind of funny because like around 2013, maybe, 12, something like that. my brother called me up on the phone, and we were just having like a random discussion about things. And he just kind of brought up at the end of the call. He's like, hey, if you ever get a chance to adapt something into the movie, you should do Death Note. And so that was like the first time that, like, my awareness was really drawn towards it, you know, in a significant way. And so that's when I went and kind of checked out, like, the first few volumes of it and always thought it was cool.

And then, you know, just turned down a couple years later, Warner Brothers. Just, you know, they'd been developing the script for quite some time, like almost 10 years. and they sent me a copy of the script, and I engaged on it with them, and it all went from there. So, you know, you obviously have a long and storied career as an independent filmmaker. You made a lot of horror movies. You've made some thrillers. This is the biggest project that you've taken on.

Did you have any trepidation about taking on something that has, like, you know, there's much history behind it, working with a major studio originally when you were working with Warner's on it? Well, I've been really lucky in the sense that, you know, I'm not one of these filmmakers who kind of had their Sunday. dance movie and then they were kind of catapulted into doing a big budget mainstream thing. There was actually a couple times in my career where that almost happened and I'm actually glad it didn't because it allowed me to kind of a, you know, kind of have a real sense of reality and keep my ego in check, you know, you don't want to buy your own hype to a certain

degree. And the danger of like being catapulted into something like that is that I think you kind of, a lot of filmmakers get a disproportionate. sense of, you know, who they are as an artist and all those kind of things. But also, like, as a, you know, just as a technical kind of thing, you know, I was able to work my way up. I mean, my very first film was $3,000. It's called Popsull. And from there, there was a horrible way to die, which was $70,000.

And then you're next, which was half a million. And then I was in sort of the four and a half to five million bracket for a couple years. and then this thing came up. And then the next one I'm doing now will be like about as big budget as you get. But it's been a good progression. And this is a great kind of step in towards of, you know, being able to understand sort of what a big budget movie means without all the big budget issues. You know, in other words, because it is a Netflix film,

there's no opening box office that we have to like really hit. And I think this would be the type of film that would be very hard to kind of land that. But I think the audience is there for it. but potentially not as a opening weekend theatrical thing. So do you have to sell yourself in those conversations? Do you have to transform into the men who can explain to the executive how you're the right guy? Right. You know, whenever I was coming up into the Hollywood system,

that was one of the things that gave me the most anxiety was, you know, having to sell myself or having to even be in meetings and things. And that was something that I had to really get over. But I was able to get over really quickly. Once you're kind of in rooms with people, you kind of get it, you know. And I've done things where, you know, I'm pitching from scratch or I've done things where, you know, it's a very friendly room. I mean, weirdly enough, like most of the projects that I've actually been attached to, it wasn't the ones where, you know, I spend like a week preparing for a pitch. And then I go in there and I pitch it and do the thing.

Weirdly, like, that's when you're in like kind of a vulnerable place and that's how they're judging you. You know, a lot of times of the movies that really come together are the ones that they're kind of, they're already thinking that you're a fit for. for it. And I think that's why, like, you know, that's how my career has gone. Like I said, I mean, like, if I'd done pop skull, you know, which is a $3,000 improvisational, psychedelic horror film, you know, like that that wasn't the one that, like, you know, studio said, that's the guy, you know, I think I did get a lot of interest and I met a lot of people through that. But you got into festivals and things because of that, right? Exactly. Yeah. I got an agent and all those kind of things. But even with that film, it was one of those things where I thought,

okay, like, you know, I'm doing my festival movie. I'm, you know, I'm going to, like Hollywood meetings and stuff. You know, this was around 2007 or eight. And so I felt like, okay, I've arrived. You know, this is the next step is to get attached to something that's a little bit bigger budget and to move up from there. But really, my career completely stagnated after that, you know, like ultimately pop school was just too weird.

And people were interested in me, but like it was too much of a chance. And, you know, because the budget was so low, too, there was no guarantee that I even knew what I was doing. And so I found that I had to kind of work my way up all over again, you know, and know. And actually, I feel like that quite a few times in my career. It feels like you have momentum and then you realize you're still at the bottom and you've got to keep scratching away until you're where you want to be. What's that like? I mean, how do you contend with that? Where you feel like you've made something and you've accomplished something, but then you still

have to feel like you're starting from scratch? You just have to be realistic about it, you know, and just at the end of the day, you just have to keep reminding yourself that it's the journey that you're on. There's no destination to it. And, you know, the only hard part is like having to deal financially, you know, and making sure that you're staying afloat. And I definitely spent quite a few years barely staying afloat, like living on couches and that kind of thing. I would say from years 2006 through 2012 or so,

I was skimming off of sometimes it'd be like $100 a week. Luckily, I have friends that I've been able to stay with, ex-girlfriend's parents, you know, that kind of thing. Did you ever think about quitting, kicking it in? No, not seriously. I mean, there was one point I remember. It was like the darkest point. It was around like 2009.

And we almost had a horrible way to die set up initially at the end of 2008. And it fell through. And it felt like that wasn't going to happen. And I was just out in the middle of nowhere in Alabama, you know, no job, no prospects. And all I had was just, you know, the drive to do this stuff. And, you know, I was able to keep myself busy doing short films. And that ended up being kind of like the saving grace of it all, you know, because I was still able to work.

with people like Joe Swanberg and all those people and stayed kind of plugged in through those. But it definitely felt like it wasn't going to happen. And then at a certain point, things just started kind of happening. But it was definitely like a good year or two in that period where it was just like it was just a dead end is what it felt like. So did you know you were going to make Death Note before Blair Witch was wrapped?

Yes. At least signed on to do Death Note before I had even started Blair Witch. So I tend to do that. I try to like get my next film set up. because you just never know what's going to happen. Thank God I did. So it's the same even with Death Note and God's Old versus Kong. You know, as soon as we had like the cut in a good place,

that's where I really started looking around for the next feature. And ultimately I had to show those producers Death Note for them to sign off on me. You know, that's like the final step. And I couldn't have done that without that movie. Sure. But signed on to it with Warner Brothers. And we were developing the screenplay for Death Note while I was off shooting Blair Witch. And that gave us a good head stuff.

So several of the producers of the movie are Japanese. Obviously, it's a Japanese story. We're in a time where if you're translating material from one race to another, it's immediately a conversation. Right. How much did you think about that ahead of time? And how do you prepare to talk about this all the time now? Ultimately, you know, like the film, it wasn't just that like characters, races changed or

anything like that. It's like, it's in a different country and the story just completely changed as well. And so there was nothing organically inherent in the story that said that any of the cats needed to be a certain nationality. And that's how we cast it, you know, is just looking for the person with the right performance and the right quality that we were looking for. And unfortunately, the whole Ghost in the Shell thing hadn't really gone down, you know, when we had started. I was going to ask you sort of what your reaction to that was. Yeah, I mean, I was actually surprised that it was, you know, what it was. I mean, I guess you see the film and you can kind of see how that, you know, went down.

I mean, you can kind of track how that went wrong to and how the studio didn't really. It's more clearly situated inside of a country that is not native to Scarlet Jansson. And people just weren't ready to handle that type of thing either. So it was kind of fumbled even from a PR perspective as well. But I think if that had had happened beforehand, we might have like assessed our casting differently. But ultimately, you know, I mean, we just cast the movie for who was right for the roles and because there was just no other reason not to. Tell me about having done Blair Witch and now doing Death Note, what it's like to work within a mythology and how you manage that. You mentioned at the top that Death Note has a lot of rules and there's a lot of reference to those rules.

Indeed. What's it like to work in something? Is that a constraint for you or is it freeing somehow? I mean, it can be a constraint just in the sense that you have an obligation. I mean, you look at Death Note is what it is in terms of the original form in the manga, you know. And it's a sprawling series that goes through all these different arcs. different characters come and go. It just wasn't designed as a movie.

It was designed as a series, you know, and it works really well as an anime. But ultimately, it's one of those things where the best parts about Death Note are really just listening to characters' internal dialogue, you know, as they go. And so that's just not really a cinematic thing. Ultimately, if you do that in a movie, I think it's going to feel kind of small. And also, it's been done. How did you go about building Ryuk? The approach to Ryuk was really from the start, almost a,

a reaction to the way that he was approached in the Japanese live action films where he was entirely CGI. And I knew that like, okay, if we're going to do like the bigger budget, you know, death note thing, like one of the main things we need to do is like figure out how to bring Ryuk to life in a way that you haven't seen before. And so the very first inclination was, is how do we get him on set? Our initial approach was we actually created a nine foot tall puppet that was, that was, like anitronic, you know, like the eyes were remote controlled in the mouth and all this.

And we created some tests of that and it was just cumbersome and it was just massive, not just up and down, but left and right. You know, like it was huge. It took up a whole room, you know, and more. So it didn't make sense to go in that route, but I still wanted something on set. So the next thing we did is, which is what we ended up in the movie, was we hired Jason Liles, who's a nearly seven-foot-tall actor, created a real suit. And everything on screen is what you see except for just his face.

So there's just a little cut out on his face. And, you know, on set he was actually wearing these kind of LED glasses so that you could see where the glowing eyes would be. And that was really cool because, again, coming from a low-budget indie background, you know, whenever you're doing those films and you don't have the money to pull off the effects, you just avoid them, you know. And so this was the first time that I'm having to kind of take that leap forward. But, you know, I'm very opinionated when I see a lot of movies that have over-reliance on CGI, and it just feels fake, and I just can't stand that. It just takes me out of the movie. It feels empty.

And so when we were approaching Riuke, because we were still just like, you know, only doing the face replacement thing, I still wanted to make sure that that was real. And we wanted the atmosphere of him to be real. So we wanted to approach him as though we weren't spending a lot of money doing like a CGI thing. So he's in the shadows most of the time. And having that LED glasses on set where we could see where his glasses. eyes where it was important because it gave us that confidence that we can like this and that even though you're not going to see much of his face, you're still going to get that glimmer in his eyes, maybe a little in his teeth and stuff.

And I think that that's going to feel just that much bigger and more expensive because the movie's not being showy about it and not, you're just not seeing the seams as much. And we wanted you to constantly guess what was real and what wasn't to a certain degree. And really just to bring the character to life. He's a demon who kind of lurks in the shadows, and we wanted that mystery to him. We wanted to do it to always kind of be squinting at him and trying to figure out what you're looking at less of just there he is. Yeah, it seems a little foolish to say it, but that the demon seems real. You know, like when you're watching it, there's something tactile going on.

Yeah, it's because he's there. He's lit, you know, and there's like, even like, there's certain things that you just, you couldn't predict necessarily if you just done him totally CGI. even like the way the light interacts with the quills that are coming out of his shoulder and the way that looks whenever it's out of focus and, you know, all that kind of stuff. You do give us a little bit of a sneak peek at the end of the movie about Jason's process, you know, which is pretty cool, not to spoil anything. Yeah, yeah, people should stick around for the credits. I'm really happy with the way those turned out.

And it gives kind of a mood of, you know, what we went through. And there's a lot of Easter eggs in there. But the, yeah, being able to see that it was like that Willem was actually performing. You see him with the motion capture thing. Willem Defoe, we should say, is Ryuk's voice. Exactly. And so, like, you can actually see that it's not just him doing a voice. You can tell he has an motion capture.

So you know that that's his face. That was important to just let people know. But also then Jason Lyles is a huge portion of bringing a Ryuk to life. He was in the suit. And just giving that moment where you can see, you know, what the movie went from and where it is. And kind of cool to see that. So the cast is quite good. You've got Nat Wolf as light and you've got Margaret Quali.

And there's a really. really exceptional Lakeith Stanfield performance. And he's doing a lot and he's like really taking the character on in a specific way. How do you make sure that everybody is working in the same movie, that all these pieces fit together with characters that are so different but need to be, need to fit together nicely? Well, I think the main thing for me is like those three main characters that you mentioned, like one of the main things is I wanted them to feel like kids.

Even though like Light and me, I have a very kind of like charged relationship. and at times it's very sexual and things. Like, I still wanted it to feel like real high school kids doing that and really get into that world. And the same thing with Lakeith, even though he's a totally outlandish weirdo. You still want that to be from the same world that they are. And like, really, it really starts from the fact that, you know, they're all kids. And from the get-go, that was sort of like one of the main departures, I think, that this takes from the original source material is that this just kind of evolved into much more of a high-stool. school movie sort of experience.

And so it's almost like a, it's almost like a crime film. Like we talked about heat and things like that early on. But like it's almost like a young adult version of that. And that's kind of the idea is that how do you make a movie about a pursuit? I think that's really interesting that like, you know, the really the second act of the movie is very much like L-Turna find. Yeah, yeah. It's a cat and mouse of it all. And, you know, it's, I mean, and that's the whole thing in the movie.

And it's interesting, like reading some of the reviews, like the early reviews that's come out where there, There's actually some people who are either really on board with the second half of the film or some people just, they kind of wish that the movie was just light, you know, blowing people's heads up for the whole film. Just personally when I was watching it, the first few deaths, I was like, I'm really watching an Adam Wingard movie. This is his version of this story when like a ladder explodes someone's head. I was like, this is right in the zone. But then, as you say, it does change a lot. Was that a very conscious choice for you to try to do some new things, have some new colors? Yeah, yeah, I mean, because ultimately that's what the core of the story. It's the story of Light and Mia, thwarting Elle's detective work and then playing off of each other.

And really the stuff in the beginning is about, you know, building us up, building the world up so that we can get there and really just kind of have fun with that more detective aspect. But it'll be interesting to see how people react to it. I think in a lot of ways it's a movie that think, in some ways, like I think the comparison to, you know, the way that, you know, I've come up, you know, with John Carpenter, you know, and the influence. influences that he's had on me is like in some ways I kind of think that like I have like certain aspects of my career that are similar to his where like I think that I make the type of movie similarly that he does that I think they age well but I think that people sometimes don't know how to handle them when they first come out. Yeah.

Yeah. So what is this year like you're the thing or big trouble little China or what are we working with right now? Yeah. No, I think it's in between the two. You know, it's definitely it's not as zany as big trouble but you know it's, you know, it's just interesting. I actually don't know, you know, because.

You know, we made a movie that's based on this source material that people feel extremely passionate about. Believe me, I know. I'm sure you'll hear plenty of it in the next two weeks. Oh, I hear plenty of it, you know, since the day I got attached to this. But that's interesting. I mean, what does that like to be so close to have to hear that? But that's something that you're spending a lot of time on that you're developing and working hard on. Well, it's interesting because, I mean, for a while I thought, okay, is this just like the state of the union for all projects? because Blair Witch immediately had like crazy reactions from people.

Similarly, this one, like from the day I got attached to it, I had a lot of these, you know, hardcore fans coming at me, you know, kind of, you know, saying I'd ruin death note and this and that. And you're just like, well, we haven't actually done anything yet. I mean, this is before casting or anything. So, you know, like it, you know, there's just a passionate fan-based world. But I think it's a good thing to have because, you know, I mean, and I get it too. But it's not like that for every project because, like, for instance,

When I got hired on Godzilla versus Kong, I thought, okay, well, here it comes. Cue all the people telling me that I'm about to ruin, you know, their favorite monster film. But that one was completely opposite. It was like the fan base welcomed me with open arms immediately. But I think what's really going on here is I think the anime fans especially feel like they've been really let down so many times by features. And they, you know, and so like instead of starting in a place where they're skeptically optimistic, they just immediately start from like, this is going to be Dragon Ball Evolution and you're going to hurt us again. And so we're just not even going to let it happen.

You know, I get where they're coming from. And, you know, and I can't deny that we've made a movie that's very different from the source material. But that's also by design because ultimately if we had tried to do something that was exactly the same, it would have just been a jumbled mess. It would have been trying to put too much in one film, stuff that's like not designed to be in a movie or. in a cinematic kind of pace or anything like that. So, you know, I think we made the best version that we could. And honestly, the creators love it, you know, like they're on board with all the changes we made.

You know, we were very forthright in terms of every script that we would send to them and cuts of the film. And they really like that it's different, you know, and that it's doing something new. Tell me a little bit about essentially moving the movie from Warner Brothers to Netflix, how that happens. And if anything changed when that started to happen. Yeah, it was an interesting process because we were really far down the line with that. We had already cast a lot of the film.

We'd done a budget and all that kind of stuff. And we were zeroing in on the script. We were about like one major draft away from nailing it. And it was funny because it was that Friday was like the last day that I was on the sound mix for Blair Witch. And then the next Monday was when I was supposed to start full time on death note. And so I went out of town that weekend. And I mean, I talked to everybody at Wounded Brothers on Friday. Everybody was like 100%.

This is fine. We're good to go. We're having a few budget things right now, but we're locking it down. You know, it's basically where we wanted to be and everything. And so I go out of town over the weekend to just, you know, take a, you know, a little breather after, you know, having worked on Blair Witch nonstop, knowing that, you know, everything was the start of Monday. And I'm driving back from Joshua Tree. And, you know, I get a call for my manager early in the morning that Monday. and, you know, he's like talking about something, and, you know, I'm like, it was kind of cryptic sounding.

And then suddenly he's like, oh, my God, am I going to be the one to have to tell you? And that's how I found out that, you know, like, he'd heard somebody had told him that they were putting the movie into turn around and this decision had kind of happened over the weekend, which is kind of weird that, you know, studio decisions don't usually happen on the weekend, by the way, you know. Those people are not working on the weekend. No, so that was kind of an interesting case. But, you know, Warner Brothers was going through a big, you know, kind of thing. at that point, you know. And this was like a Greg Silverman movie and he's not there anymore. So I think there was a lot of, you know, stuff going on.

And they were getting away from mid-range budget movies at this time, too, because they'd had some, you know, bigger budget flops. But I think they were like trying to really gear towards their bigger budget stuff and get rid of the middle ground stuff. And so we were just part of that. And so I thought the movie wasn't going to happen, though. How long were you in limbo then? But it felt like a very short period of time.

Not long at all. But that's the funny thing is I thought there's no way this is going to happen. And there's a rated R movie about a magic notebook. And, you know, it's a big budget, you know, relatively speaking. You know, they started putting it around town. And there was immediately a lot of interest based on it. But, you know, everybody kind of wanted to do it for $15 million less and that kind of thing. And it was just like that would be a disaster for us.

But then, you know, sure enough, Netflix raised their hand. And they said, this is the type of thing we're looking for, you know, something that has like a mainstream appeal. But it's doing something outside of the box that studio systems aren't usually known for doing. doing, but putting that kind of studio money into it. And it just happened immediately. I think by the end of that week, we were already meeting with Netflix, and it was pretty clear that they were good to go. And, you know, I think there was like about a month of everybody's contracts

had to be renegotiated. But that was it. You know, after that, we were back on track and went immediately into pre-production and got it going. How does it compare to other movie productions you've worked on? Was there anything that sort of made it a Netflix production, or was it just you guys were off to do your thing in the way that you did? Yeah, I mean, I think Netflix is, they're a studio just like anybody else.

I mean, there's a lot at stake with something like that. And so I think there's like a misconception that you can just like run around and do whatever you want. If you're on, you know, like something like a streaming service is dime, which is probably true if it's like under a certain amount of money. With us, it was we had to really make sure that we were justifying everything appropriately just like you would at a studio because you're spending a lot of money. And they have a lot at stake in it, you know, because like they're trying to set up a new tier of filmmaking. And, you know, we're right at the front of that.

And, but they were great, honestly. I mean, like, they're very conscious of the artist. Like, they're not going to try to push around directors. You know, they really want the directors to bring a unique vision to it. And so in that sense, they're very friendly and everything. Let's wrap up with two things. One, what can you tell me about Godzilla versus Kong? And what is – I'm specifically interested in how you, you know,

you feel about now spending four years or three years of your life on one movie, given how prolific you've been in the past? Well, I mean, I'm really happy to be spending a decent amount of time. I mean, because the older I get, the more movies I make, the more time I want to spend on them anyways. Like, I want more days. I want more time to edit. And having the experience to know what I want and need just kind of pushes me more and more

in that direction. I mean, I like making a lot of stuff, but at the end of the day, it's like I just want to spend the time to make sure that I'm going to walk away from whatever I'm doing. feeling really good about it. So yeah, I mean, I think that's fine. I mean, there's not much to say about Godzilla versus Kong right now that I could actually say publicly. I mean, like we are, we're in the treatment phase right now. It's about to go to script. The first time I met with legendary, you know, they took me into a room and, you know, they had the script for Godzilla too, and they had a really great lookbook, which was incredible. It was like these big, full-scale

paintings, you know, so you could really read the screenplay and flip through the lookbook and, you know, you see all the monsters there and all that stuff. And, you know, so you didn't really even have to use your imagination. You knew what it was, you know, kind of from the get-go. And that route was really helpful. And, you know, again, that was with my assistant and I, Gary. Like, we went in there and we just read that script for like seven hours. I mean, like, we, you know, because that was like a big decision point.

It was like, okay, if we're really going to do this, you know, which, A, it would be amazing to do this. But we want to make sure that, like, we really understand what this movie is and then look at this outline and say, like, is this really something that, we can do. And it totally was, you know, like, there was like, I won't say what it is now, but there was, like, one aspect to Godzilla versus Kong, which I was 100% going into it. I was like, this movie has to have this set piece in it. And that's what I want to do. And so I was reading Godzilla, too, and I was really nervous, like, are they going to have this set piece in here? They didn't. And then I got to the outline, and sure enough, they had the perfect setup for the set piece in Godzilla versus Kong. And that's what I knew.

It was like, okay, this is, yeah. Nice. Let's end with this. I always like to ask filmmakers what the last great thing they saw was. What do you got for us? Definitely Dunkirk, you know. Yeah. I did see Atomic Blonde last night, which was pretty good.

It was a lot better than I expected it to be, you know? I wasn't sure about the trailer, but then I went and saw it and soundtrack was really fun. Although I didn't really understand, like, you know, they used that Inglorious Bastards song, the David Bowie. Yeah, yeah, the cat people went. And I was like, it's kind of too soon to use this. It's been claimed. Yeah, especially for the opening credits of this, I was like, eh, this feels a little lazy, but like the fight scenes were unbelievable. I really like that film.

But Dunkirk was the one that really blew me away. I feel like that's going to be my favorite film of the year, unless something else comes along that just knocks me off my socks, or knocks me out of socks, but just the scope of it, like the pacing, the kind of experimental quality of it. And, you know, I'm a sucker for war films. Like, that's the trajectory like I'd like to go into at some point is to be able to do large-scale. like battle sequences, especially period battle sequences. So that movie was doing a lot of things that excite me anyways. And obviously the IMAX format was so cool to see.

Adam Wingard, thank you so much for joining me. This was very illuminating. Good luck with Death Newton. Thank you very much. Today's show is brought to you by Achievement-oriented, our gaming podcast and part of the Ringer podcast network. Listen in as two of my favorite Ringer employees, Ben Lindberg and Jason Concepcion,

and review the latest video game releases, talk to industry and insiders about creating some of the titles out there and discuss the fascinating subculture surrounding the games themselves. Subscribe and listen to Achievement Oriented, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.