Willem Dafoe Providing Voice of Shinigami Ryuk in DEATH NOTE

Adam Wingard's (You're Next, The Guest, Blair Witch) feature film adaptation of Death Note has found its Ryuk. Mashable reports that Willem Dafoe has signed on to voice the character of Ryuk, a Shinigami ("death god") that drops the Death Note book into the human world because he's bored and wants to see what happens when a human utilizes its power.

For those that don't know, the story follows a high school student named Light Yagami, who finds a book called the Death Note which has the power to kill anyone whose name is written within it. Here's a more detailed description:

Light Yagami is an ace student with great prospects - and he's bored out of his mind. But all that changes when he finds the Death Note, a notebook dropped by a rogue Shinigami death god. Any human whose name is written in the notebook dies, and now Light has vowed to use the power of the Death Note to rid the world of evil. But when criminals begin dropping dead, the authorities send the legendary detective L to track down the killer. With L hot on his heels, will Light lose sight of his noble goal...or his life? Light tests the boundaries of the Death Note powers as L and the police begin to close in. Luckily Light's father is the head of the Japanese National Police Agency and leaves vital information about the case lying around the house. With access to his father's files, Light can keep one step ahead of the authorities. But who is the strange man following him, and how can Light guard against enemies whose names he doesn't know?

Dafoe sounds like an excellent choice for this chaos-causing character, and he joins Nat Wolff, Margaret Qualley, Keith Stanfield, Paul Nakauchi, and Shea Whigham in the film. We already know the movie will be rated R, and it'll be interesting to see what Wingard does with this story, since it sounds like a more FX-heavy project than anything he's done in the past. Production is currently underway, and we'll keep you updated when we hear more.