New run will debut in Tokyo, with overseas performances planned

HoriPro announced on Tuesday that Frank Wildhorn's Death Note the Musical will get a rerun in January 2020 with an all-new cast. The run will begin at the Toshima Ward Performing Arts Exchange Theater (Owl Spot), and will travel throughout Japan, as well as overseas. The production is now taking audition applications for the role of main character Light Yagami.

Frank Wildhorn, an American composer known for songs sung by Whitney Houston ("Where Do Broken Hearts Go?") and Natalie Cole, scored the Death Note musical. Tamiya Kuriyama, a recipient of the Japanese government's Medal with Purple Ribbon, is once again directing. Jack Murphy (The Civil War, Rudolf, Carmen, Wonderland, The Count of Monte Cristo) wrote the lyrics, and Ivan Menchell (The Cemetery Club, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Bonnie and Clyde) wrote the script.

The musical last had a rerun in September 2017.

In Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's original 2003-2006 supernatural suspense manga, teenager Light Yagami finds a notebook with which he can put people to death by writing their names. He begins a self-anointed crusade against the criminals of the world, and a cat-and-mouse game begins with the authorities and one idiosyncratic genius detective.

In addition to the 2006 television anime adaptation and tie-in specials, Death Note also received a Japanese live-action film adaptation in 2006, with a sequel titled Death Note: The Last Name , and a spinoff titled L change the WorLd in 2008. A live-action television series adaptation premiered in July 2015, and ended in September 2015. A new film titled Death Note: Light up the NEW world , described as a "forbidden sequel" to the first live-action film, opened in Japan in October 2016. Viz Media released the manga, previous Japanese live-action films, anime, and other tie-in projects in North America, and Crunchyroll streamed the live-action television series. Funimation licensed the Death Note, Death Note: The Last Name, and Death Note Light up the NEW world films and will release the films on home video on January 22.

The original manga also inspired a Netflix live-action film that debuted in 2017.

Sources: HoriPro, Comic Natalie