Writer/Director Lee Isaac Chung has been announced as the director for the live-action adaptation of the 2016 animated film Your Name. J.J. Abrams and acclaimed Japanese producer Genki Kawamura are teaming up to produce the Bad Robot/Paramount/Toho film. The new film is reimagining of the original Japanese film, dubbed an “instant classic” by Deadline. The original animated feature was also produced by Genki Kawamura and grossed $303 Million dollars in Japan.
As a big fan of 2016’s Your Name, Abrams, along with Bad Robot and Paramount, jumped at the chance to acquire the rights when they became available in 2017. The upcoming live-action adaptation is based on script drafted by Emily V. Gordon (The Big Sick) and re-worked from the original script written by Eric Heisserer (Arrival).
The pedigree of talent already signed onto the project, paired with the acclaim and success of the animated original, indicates that the upcoming Your Name will be a film watch for upon its release. Deadline states that, “in this reimagined version, 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.”
Writer/director Lee Isaac Chung has garnered well-deserved attention lately as his semi-autobiographical film Minari recently won both the Grand Jury and Audience Awards at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. The award-winning Minari depicts a family, Korean immigrants in Arkansas, as they begin their own farm and reflects Chung’s upbringing as a second-generation Korean immigrant in Arkansas.
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