The original manga and anime star Light Yagami, a student in Tokyo who finds the otherworldly Death Note and uses it to eliminate criminals. Him and the prodigy detective, L, enter a battle of wits as Light hides his acts behind the codename Kira. Wingard's Death Note stars Light Turner, who also comes across the Death Note and L, but in Seattle, Washington. These major changes from the source material have caused some controversy among fans, but Wingard explained that the direct adaption of the story in an American setting didn't work well.
”It's one of those things where the harder I tried to stay 100 percent true to the source material, the more it just kind of fell apart... You're in a different country, you're in a different kind of environment, and you're trying to also summarize a sprawling series into a two-hour-long film. For me, it became about what do these themes mean to modern day America, and how does that affect how we tell the story. Ultimately, the cat and mouse chase between Light and L, the themes of good, evil, and what's in between the gray area. Those are the core things of Death Note, and that's really what we went for."