Is Death Note finally being made into a U.S. cast movie?  Whether this is good news or not for fans is yet to be seen but, after some digging, it appears that the movie is on the fast track to start filming, possibly as soon as this Fall for a Fall 2010 release. 

After a multi-studio battle, the film rights were finally secured by Vertigo Entertainment, a studio that has been responsible for a slew of Asian remakes coming to the states including Infernal Affairs (aka The Departed), Shutter, and Ju-On (aka The Grudge).  As with their previous remakes, Vertigo is having a script treatment written and then will approach larger studios with pre-production set.  Vertigo has hired Vlas and Charles Parlapanides to draft the script with co-creator Takeshi Obata overlooking the re-write.

None of this is necessarily NEW news as most of this was reported last year.  Sources at Vertigo, however, are confirming that the final draft of the script has been greenlit and casting is about to begin.  No word yet on casting choices or whether or not the "Shinigami" characters will be CGI or not, but the studio is apparently reaching out to Joseph Gordon Levitt for a role, though that role is unknown.

After battling for the DRAGONBALL franchise and losing, sources at Vertigo are vowing to stay more true to the source material than what Dragonball appears to be.  Death Note was the top selling anime and manga of 2007, unseeding Dragonball's 13 year reign.

The original's story follows the mysterious "L" and others as they try to catch cool and brainy high school student Raito Yagami ("Light" in America), who has come into possession of a notebook that allows him to summon a murderous demon simply by writing the name of his intended victim. Although Raito is aware that killing is wrong, he strongly believes that the violent crimes he perpetrates are justified because "evildoers must die in order to create a better society."

The anime/manga has already been adapted into 3 live action movies in Japan which have already been released or scheduled for theatrical release in the U.S.