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Deadline: Lee Isaac Chung to Direct Hollywood Remake of Makoto Shinkai's your name.
posted on by Alex Mateo
Entertainment news website Deadline reported on Friday that Lee Isaac Chung (Munyurangabo, Minari) will direct the planned live-action Hollywood adaptation of Makoto Shinkai's your name. anime film. Chung will also rewrite the film adaptation's script based off of a draft from Emily V. Gordon (The Big Sick), and not the previously penned script by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Eric Heisserer (Arrival, Bird box). Deadline describes the adaptation's story: "Two teenagers discover they are magically and intermittently swapping bodies. When a disaster threatens to upend their lives, they must journey to meet and save their worlds."
Chung made his directorial debut in 2007 with Munyurangabo, a human drama set in Rwanda and scripted in the Kinyarwanda language, and the film played as an official selection at festivals in Cannes, Toronto, and Berlin. His most recent film, Minari, drew inspiration from his own childhood living in a Korean-American family on an Arkansas farm, and the film garnered the top two U.S. awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
Deadline had previously reported in February 2019 that Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man, 500 DAYS of Summer) was directing the planned live-action Hollywood adaptation of Makoto Shinkai's your name. anime film.
Paramount Pictures and J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions is producing the new film. Abrams (2009's Star Trek, Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, Super 8) and Lindsey Weber from Bad Robot are credited as producers alongside Genki Kawamura, the original film's producer. Paramount and Bad Robot will work with the original film's producer TOHO, who will distribute the new film in Japan.
Heisserer earlier stated that the Japanese rights holders requested a Westernized take on the source material. "They stated if they wanted a Japanese live-action version, they would just do it themselves," he said. "But they want to see it through the lens of a western viewpoint."
The original film centers on Taki, a high school boy living in Tokyo who works part-time at a restaurant, and Mitsuha, a high school girl living in a town in rural Japan who wants to live in the city. One day, they begin switching bodies every time they sleep, and have to find a way to communicate with each other to manage each other's lives. Later, when they try to meet up physically for the first time, Taki discovers a secret that will lead to a race against time to try and save each other.
The original film opened in Japan in August 2016, and has become the fourth highest-grossing film of all time in Japan, the second highest-grossing Japanese film, and the second highest-grossing anime film.
The film opened in 92 countries and territories, and earned box-office achievements in South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Taiwan, in addition to Japan. Funimation Films screened the film in North America.
Source: Deadline (Justin Kroll)
