Earlier this week Variety reported that the popular series “Death Note” may be adapted into a Hollywood film by Warner Bros. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Death Note, it was a widely popular manga which was adapted into an anime and 2 Japanese live-action films, all of which turned out very successful.

The original story revolves around a student named Light Yagami who one day finds a notebook on the ground labelled “Death Note”. Inside, he finds instructions that explain that the Death Note is a special book that has the power to kill anyone if you write down their real name and picture their face in your mind. After testing the Death Note’s powers, Light decides to use it to rid the world of all evil and corrupt people, leaving behind only those he judges to be worthy. With criminals around the world suddenly meeting their demise, the police suspect that this isn’t just coincidence and hire the world’s top detective, whose alias is the letter “L”. Light and L face off in the rest of the series as Light tries to uncover L’s real name to escape suspicion, and L tries to figure out how a killer can kill with just a name and image.

It’s not every day that an anime gets adapted into a Hollywood film. In fact, the only two movies from anime that I can think of are Speed Racer and Dragonball Evolution, both of which didn’t do so well in theatres. Other anime titles that are being adapted into Hollywood films include Akira, The Last Airbender (which is actually an anime-like cartoon), Ghost In The Shell, and possible Full Metal Panic. Seeing how poorly Speed Racer and Dragonball Evolution turned out, it’s questionable whether a Death Note movie will be any better. I guess we’ll just have to wait for a few more anime movies to come out before we get our hopes up with Death Note.