Naruto Live-action Film Has Serious Problem, it's Future at Stakes

Lionsgate has been rumored to be planning to adapt the Naruto manga into a live-action film for almost ten years, although there wasn't much information shared for a long time and the project appeared to be at a standstill. The project only gained momentum last year when it was announced that Tasha Huo, who had previously worked on The Witcher: Blood Origin, had been appointed as the screenwriter.

Source: Naruto, Hayate Date, Studio Pierrot, 2002

The creators of the live-action adaptation of Naruto face a challenging task, as the source material includes 700 manga chapters, which have been adapted into 425 anime episodes, resulting in approximately 212 hours of story (only considering canonical episodes, not fillers). It's a substantial amount of material to adapt into movies if the intention is to present the complete story of Naruto Uzumaki in a live-action format, and it appears to be the only appropriate direction given that this project is already underway.

What's wrong with the live-action adaptation of Naruto?

After the success of Netflix's live-action One Piece, anime and manga fans have become eager for well made live-action versions of their favorite creations, but I have some concerns about whether Naruto will be able to replicate what the adaptation of Eiichiro Oda's manga was able to do. The explanation is very simple - while both cases involve a vast source material (One Piece is even lengthier than the adventures of the most unpredictable ninja, and is continuously expanding), Netflix, in contrast to Lionsgate, opted for a series rather than a cinematic adaptation. Therefore, in his adaptation, there's more breathing space for the story, allowing the filmmakers to develop the narrative calmly without omitting too many original parts.

Source: Naruto, Hayate Date, Studio Pierrot, 2002

In the case of Naruto, Tasha Huo faces a difficult challenge as she must adapt the manga into a movie, if everything goes well. Manga are divided into arcs, which would be enough to create separate movies based on them, but such a thing is impossible to implement in the case of live-action adaptation for a simple reason - no one will make almost 20 films in one series. So, it will be necessary to connect certain stories (maybe even some will be omitted). In my opinion, if we were to split it up, we'd have to make as many as 9 movies. The last 2 would have to seriously cut down the source material, otherwise each of them would be at least four hours long.

However, I don't think they would decide on that many films. This would involve too many production challenges, excessive costs, and the risk that the cast would fall apart along the way - no actor would commit in advance for such a significant amount of time. Besides, some of the actors would at some point simply become too old to play these heroes - after all, in Naruto, many of the main characters are teenagers who are 17 years old at the end of the story.

What should we expect from Naruto live-action adaptation?

In such a form, we can certainly expect many changes in the story. How drastic? It's difficult to tell at this stage. However, it's clear that the filmmakers will have to decide on many cuts, which will certainly affect the supporting characters. These were starting to get neglected at some stage in the story anyway, and it's only going to get worse in this case.

Source: Naruto: Shippuden; Hayate Date, Masaaki Kumagai, Yasuaki Kurotsu, Osamu Kobayashi and Chiaki Kon; Studio Pierrot; 2002

Truth be told, I don't expect the success of Naruto live-action adaptation in this form (although I don't rule out the possibility that I may be positively surprised). Films simply don't fit this story and cannot do it any good. Lionsgate has cast itself into a huge obstacle right from the very beginning, which may actually result in the failure of this project, which has a chance of ending up on Hollywood's pile of shame, next to Dragonball: Evolution. It's a pity, because I would love to see a good live-action adaptation of Uzumaki's adventures, as I have a great sentiment for them because it was the first anime I ever watched.

It would make much more sense to turn Naruto into a series, just like it was done with One Piece. In this case, because of the specific medium, some adjustments and edits would be required, but they wouldn't need to be as extreme as in the case of significantly shorter film productions. I don't see an option for them to do justice to the source material.

Edyta Jastrzebska

Edyta Jastrzebska

A graduate of journalism and social communication as well as cultural studies. She started at Gamepressure.com as one of the newspeople in the films department. Currently she oversees the Gamepressure movie&TV newsroom. She excels in the field of film and television, both in reality-based and fantasy themes. Keeps up with industry trends, but in her free time she prefers to watch less known titles. Has a complicated relationship with popular ones, which is why she only gets convinced about many of them when the hype around them subsides. Loves to spend her evenings not only watching movies, series, reading books and playing video games, but also playing text RPGs, which she has been into for several years.