As is often the case when remaking something that fans consider sacrosanct, the ‘trolls’ will come out and denounce the work, sometimes spewing hate towards those involved with it. This time it would appear that comments and death threats made towards director Adam Wingard about his live-action adaptation of Netflix’s Death Note caused him to leave Twitter.

Based on Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s manga, since its release on Netflix the film has resulted in heaps of criticism from fans; be it the change in location, the personality of the main characters, the additional rules, even just that there’s a remake at all.

Some fans decided to send their thoughts about the film to Wingard directly, via Twitter. And some (who might not even be fans) decided to take things to the extreme and send death threats.

On 26 August (the day after the film was released on Netflix) the director responded to the hate, tweeting, “Sorry trolls but the artist always wins in the long run.” He then followed up, saying, “I love how many people feel personally attacked by this tweet. Its [sic] almost like troll bait. Those that bite expose themselves.”

According to Yahoo, Wingard spoke of receiving death threats before the script to the film was even finished, as people told the director he “had ruined Death Note.” Wingard said that he knew he was never going to win those fans over.

When talking to MyM Magazine (issue 65) about the changes in the film, Wingard said, “The original Death Note is such a Japanese thing. You can’t just go, ‘Let’s do the same thing with American actors.’ They’re different worlds. So this Death Note goes, ‘If the same thing happened here, how would it pan out? How would being in America affect the story? So we allowed the stories and the characters to evolve in a natural way.”

Adam Wingard’s final tweet was on 6 September, which said, “It’s time to switch gears over to GvK. Going dark.” GvK being Wingard’s next film, Godzilla vs. Kong.

Originally published on MyM Buzz on 13 September 2017.