12
votes
Naruto live-action is a go - Destin Daniel Cretton to write/direct
Link information
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- Title
- The Hunt for Team 7 Begins: Naruto Filmmakers Launch a Massive Global Casting Search to Find the Stars of the Live-Action Movie
- Published
- Jul 9 2026
- Word count
- 262 words
I'm of mixed emotions about this one, to be honest. Naruto was an anime I watched contemporaneously through fan-subs I downloaded via Bit Torrent and later through IRC. I kept up all the way through until they had that weird non-manga race arc that was just before the big Sasuke arc, and then I dropped off due to life and other things.
I recently tried reading the manga and got further than I did in the anime, and it is still genuinely a really good story. The track record of live-action adaptations of anime from US studios is extremely poor, and though Kishimoto is excited, I have my doubts. Maybe I'll be wrong to feel down about this. I really, honestly hope I'm wrong to be down about this.
Edit: OG title on IGN is "Naruto Live-Action Movie Director, Studio Launch Worldwide Casting Search for Lead Roles"
I dutifully read fan translations of the manga for many years, but I'm scratching my head a bit at the decision to make it live action. I can only hope there will be plentiful Naruto running and Japanese-focused translations, believe it!
Within Japan, live action adaptations have been relatively common. Classics from the same period like Death Note come to mind.
Western studios have been historically bad at adapting any kinds of animation but the unexpected success of the famously unadaptable One Piece has put some wind in western sails.
I'm, as usual, incredibly sceptical of any adaptation attempt. Though I wouldn't mind being surprised like One Piece did.
To this day, the fact that One Piece is the series that got a decent (western) live-action adaptation will never cease to amaze me given the protagonist has Looney Tunes powers and other series are much more grounded. Including Death Note, Funnily enough.
Naruto was a major influence on my... Well, actually my life, so I wouldn't mind a good adaptation. But I'm also skeptical. They can't really condense the manga into two or three hours, so they'd probably need to focus on some specific part of the story (or make an original one)... And the main characters are 12 years old in the first part, so casting might be an even bigger pain than other adaptations.
Here's hoping they don't try to Americanize it or radically change it. Would be kinda stupid since it's about ninjas, but you never know.
Considering that they’re making the casting global, and Kishimoto talks a lot in the manga TPB about his favorite stuff being a lot of Japanese things that were American influenced, I hope they keep that distance; American, but through a uniquely Japanese lens.
Argh. So this is a tangent rant but:
One of the selling points of Naruto to me was a wide and varied cast that actually got it's time in the sun. The longer the story went, the more we converged into DBZ where suddenly it was the Naruto/Sauske show (really kicks off a bit after the Pain arc).
Even leaving out the uh...less than stellar handling of most of the female cast (which to be fair isn't as bad as many, just not good) it was still disappointing to go from "lets see what other creative ways they use their powers" to "Oh good, they're going to kamehameha it harder".
Hell having a literal copy character who STOPS BOTHERING TO COPY TO USE HIS KAMEHAMEHA is such a letdown.
I've found HxH and World Trigger to scratch the itch and handle the story the way Naruto started, and I hoped would continue.
Of course naruto is finished so it gets credit there, and leads to at least 2 data points that reality hates well written stories with a varied and balanced cast to the level of inflicting disease for it.
I can second this. The first part pre-timeskip is great. Lots of tactical thinking and sneaky tactics because the main characters are 12-year-olds. There are still big, flashy battles, but the kids are the underdogs and either play support to a more experienced character, or get creative and tricky, with some still shockingly epic moments (Naruto vs Gaara comes to mind).
After the timeskip though? I describe Shippuden as a boss rush.
Nearly every arc centers around fighting different Akatsuki members. In most series, the members would be the final boss of an organization. The cast would have to work their way through lower ranks. But the Akatsuki doesn't really have any lower-level mooks or sub-bosses, they're all final boss-level characters. So the fights are automatically bigger and more flashy, and each battle obviously needs to get flashier than the last. There's still tactical thinking, but not to the extent of Part 1.
And sadly, that focus also limited how much the rest of the cast could be developed. Screentime was devoted mostly to the characters involved in the current fights. There wasn't much breathing room to have actual character growth and development because it kept going from one fight to the next. Female characters definitely suffered the most since Kishi already struggled to write them (but hey, at least it didn't have multiple arcs dedicated to rescuing a female character—and their designs are actually awesome and practical instead of just fan service!). Also, I'm pretty sure Kishi was burnt out by the end during that final arc and was just trying to get to the end (sadly seemed fairly common for big Weekly Shonen Jump series). Even then he still added a bunch of new characters he didn't need to (namely the samurai).
Speaking of HxH, one thing that amused me was realizing that Sasuke and the Uchiha clan were just a copy of Kurapika and the Kurtas. Down to having red eyes with special powers.
Well, I never did make it past the Sasuke Rescue Team arc, so…
Well then I’d say you’re in the same boat as my wife who never got past Soul Society in Bleach.
She asks all my friends who finished it if she should continue.
They say no.
She says it was so good and she wants more.
So did they.
(Naruto isn’t THAT bad but it sure isn’t what it was)
Yeah, I think I didn't get past Soul Society, either. I went and looked at the arcs and in my story arc Ichigo never got beyond being a substitute soul reaper.
I selfishly always enjoy seeing Cretton getting high profile work because I get to be insufferable and mention to people that I met him years ago before he was famous. Granted it was brief and inconsequential, but that doesn’t stop me from annoyingly referring to him as my close personal friend.
Every time I see a new celebrity I peer at them to see if I can recognize them, because I lived in the San Fernando Valley for so long and met so many random people who were actors, writers, producers, stagehands, studio executives, etc.
So far, no, nothing. I mean, not nothing, the really famous people I met are still mostly really famous. But I don't really see anyone that I knew who was lesser-known making their way up through the ranks. But I still look, just in case, so I can do exactly the same thing: "ah, my close personal friend..."
I genuinely, to this day, really liked Naruto up to and including his fight with Gaara. So that's pre-time skip I guess. If Kishimoto-sensei is excited, that's good: regardless of how I feel like the end of the series, Team 7 and the world around them was peak story telling, and sensei deserves to feel proud of his work and see it become a bigger thing.
Naruto run or riot though.
Edit: also, I might be alone in my dislike of MCU Shang Chi so not really any expectations from the director at all