Charles Melton in Final Talks to Play Kakashi in Lionsgate's Live-Action Naruto
Charles Melton is in final negotiations to play Kakashi Hatake in the live-action Naruto movie at Lionsgate, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Kakashi Hatake is the elite ninja mentor to Naruto and his friends in the original manga by Masashi Kishimoto, which ran in Japan's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from 1999 to 2014. The series has printed over 250 million copies across more than 60 countries. Lionsgate had no comment on the casting.
Destin Daniel Cretton, who directed Marvel's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, is set to both write and direct the film. He first boarded the project in February 2024, when Deadline reported his attachment to the long-in-development adaptation. Cretton is also producing through his company Hisako alongside Jeyun Munford. The Arad Productions team of Avi Arad, Ari Arad and Emmy Yu are producing with Jeremy Latcham.
Melton brings an unusual skill set to a ninja film. He holds a second-degree black belt in taekwondo and competed at the Junior Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. He broke out as Reggie Mantle on The CW's Riverdale and recently earned an Emmy nomination for his role in the Netflix series Beef.
While Melton may be closing in on Kakashi, the title role remains unfilled. A search is underway to find a young actor to play Naruto himself, the orphaned ninja-in-training at the centre of the story. Cretton began the casting process in July, as The Playlist first reported.
Production is eyeing a start around February 2027, according to sources cited by The Hollywood Reporter. No release date has been set.
For fans of the manga and its anime adaptations, the Kakashi casting is the first concrete sign of how Cretton plans to populate his version of the Hidden Leaf Village. The character is a fan favourite — a masked, silver-haired prodigy who trains Team 7, the squad that includes Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura. Melton's martial-arts background is a natural fit for the role's physical demands, though the film's tone and visual approach remain under wraps.
Live-action manga adaptations carry a particular weight for studios: they come with a built-in global audience, but that audience has strong opinions about fidelity. Lionsgate's bet is that a manga property of Naruto's scale — a quarter of a billion copies sold worldwide — can support a theatrical franchise if the right creative team lands the casting. The February 2027 target gives Cretton roughly six months from now to finish his search for a lead.
