Like it or not, after many years of development hell, a live-action Naruto film seems to be coming out of Hollywood. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton is currently attached to the project, and while he may have the directorial talent needed to pull off a striking manga/anime adaptation, we’re still understandably concerned about such a difficult transition. Now, the film’s original screenwriter is trying to reassure fans.

Entertainment Weekly recently spoke with Tasha Huo, the showrunner of the upcoming Netflix animated series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, and of course tried to get some new information about Naruto. To her (and everyone else’s) surprise, she actually spoke at length about the process of putting this film together so far.

While Cretton is now part of Hollywood’s “big league” thanks to Shang-Chi’s right-wing success in 2021 – just as we were coming out of the worst of the Covid pandemic – his background in original work is extensive, and he has also found time to continue producing short films and TV series after his Marvel film found an audience. Huo praised this aspect of his career, saying that “his own writing and storytelling” is “very personal and relatable” to viewers, before suggesting that the main idea behind the Naruto film is to focus on the characters and what they go through: “This is definitely a film that comes from the love of Naruto, this character and their relationships.”

Despite all the flashy action sequences and mythology-building, most fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe admit that a big part of Shang-Chi’s appeal was the relationship between the protagonist and Xu Wenwu, aka the (real) Mandarin, at the center of it all. A really solid family drama that ties everything together, something the creatives behind Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame really understood and that several other Marvel flicks failed to capture.

“After enjoying his other films and realizing that his strength lies in creating solid dramas about people, I was convinced that there was no other director for (Naruto). When I actually met Destin, I also got to know him as an open-minded director who was willing to accept my input, and I fully believed that we could work together in the production process,” Huo added. While Cretton is now also involved in Naruto as a writer and will likely rework the script into something he is completely happy with before entering active pre-production, the fact that he has fully embraced the previous writer’s input is encouraging news, and something that doesn’t always happen in this type of complex production.

Still, a lot can go wrong with a big-budget anime adaptation like Lionsgate is putting together. Netflix’s One Piece series was encouraging, but movies are a different ballgame, so let’s hope Cretton manages to navigate those waters with fewer problems than he did with the now-canceled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (not his fault).