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Deadline: Minari's Lee Isaac Chung to No Longer Direct your name. Hollywood Remake

Entertainment news website Deadline reported on Tuesday that director Lee Isaac Chung (Munyurangabo, Minari) has left the production for the planned live-action Hollywood adaptation of Makoto Shinkai's your name. anime film.

Deadline's report indicates that Chung left due to "scheduling conflicts," with Paramount Pictures now seeking a replacement.

Deadline previously reported on Chung being attached to the film in September last year, noting then that the director would also rewrite the film adaptation's script based off of a draft from Emily V. Gordon (The Big Sick).

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 earned six nods at this year's Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It also won numerous other awards, including Best Foreign Language Film at last year's Golden Globes, and the top two U.S. awards at last 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 live-action your name. 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.

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 fifth highest-grossing film of all time in Japan, the third highest-grossing Japanese film, and the third 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)