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Charles Melton, who recently landed an Emmy nomination for his role in the Netflix series Beef, is in final negotiations for a key role in the live-action movie set up at Lionsgate, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

Destin Daniel Cretton, who is currently in theaters with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, is set to direct the movie based on the manga series by Masashi Kishimoto.

Naruto is the coming-of-age story of a young and enthusiastic ninja named Naruto Uzumaki who wants to grow up to be the leader of his ninja village but also happens to have the spirit of a nine-tailed demon fox inside him. The story was serialized in Japan’s popular Weekly Shonen Jump from 1999 to 2014 and later spawned a couple of popular animated series that ran for years on Cartoon Network and Disney XD.

A search is underway to find the young actor to play Naruto. Melton is said to be playing Kakashi Hatake, the elite ninja mentor figure to the main character and his friends. Kakashi is one of the most popular characters in the long-running and massively popular manga.

Lionsgate had no comment on the casting.

Avi Arad, Ari Arad and Emmy Yu are producing for Arad Productions with Jeremy Latcham. Cretton is producing alongside Jeyun Munford through his company, Hisako. 

Cretton, whose credits also include the Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, is coming off the massive success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. With its current $2 billion at the global box office, it is one of the highest-grossing movies of all time. Naruto is set to be next up for the director and is eyeing a production start around February 2027, according to sources.

Melton broke out as a star on the long-running CW series Riverdale, where he played Reggie Mantle, then transitioned to more prestige fare beginning with Todd Haynes’ May December, starring opposite Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. His other credits have included Alex Garland’s Warfare and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell.

The actor is a longtime fan of anime and manga and is also extremely proficient in martial arts. He is a second-degree black belt in taekwondo and competed in the Junior Olympics held in Seoul, South Korea. 

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