Yes, you read that title right. The hit anime movie
Your Name is in the works for a live adaption Hollywood release. Paramount Pictures and J.J. Abrams will look to take on the Japanese animated drama that took the world by storm.
If you haven’t heard of
Your Name, it tells the story of a high school girl in rural Japan and a high school boy in Tokyo who swap bodies periodically when they fall asleep. Of course, they run into troubles managing each other’s lives while communicating is with sharpie messages written on their bodies and notebooks. The story is written and directed by Makoto Shinkai who also made other anime movies like
Children Who Chase Lost Voices,
The Garden of Words and
5 Centimeters Per Second.
Your Name was released in Japan on August 26, 2016, with critical acclaim, deep story, and emotional impact, and is currently the highest-grossing anime film of all time beating Miyazaki’s
Spirted Away with $355.2 million worldwide. However, it seems like it didn’t do too well in the U.S. theaters with only $5 million made, which might be the cause of this adaptation.
Currently, J.J. Abrams will produce via his Bad Robot banner along with Genki Kawamura, the original producer of the anime film. Eric Heisserer is writing the script, he was nominated for an Oscar for the 2016 sci-fi movie,
Arrival. Paramount and Bad Robot will work with Toho Co., which produced the original, on the development of the movie. A statement from Shinkai shows some hope in the project:
"Your Name is a film created with the innate imaginations of a Japanese team and put together in a domestic medium. When such a work is imbued with Hollywood filmmaking, we may see new possibilities that we had been completely unaware of. I am looking forward to the live-action film with excited anticipation.”
The same can be said by Kawamura:
“The meetings so far have been creatively stimulating with fantastic ideas that no doubt will make for a great movie. I am greatly honored to work with these incredible creators in bringing to audiences the Hollywood live-action version of Your Name.”
However, fans of anime franchises are still concerned with this beloved film getting the Hollywood and U.S. live-adaption treatment. Recently, the crime thriller
Death Note got the U.S. live-adaptation by streaming service Netflix with reviews by critics and fans being harsh for bad acting and not sticking to the source material. In March,
Ghost in the Shell a futuristic sci-fi anime film and series, had problems with the story, acting, and a whitewashing controversy. This news also comes after more rumors for an
Akria’
s adaption for U.S. audiences earlier this month.
Even creators of a series can be wrong about an adaption, with Death Note creators Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata praising the Netflix adaption before the release
. Obha
called it “more interesting than I expected” and said
“Every bit of it is high quality and very fashionable”, while Obata thought it was a
“class A thriller” that he would
“I'd like to draw as well."
There is no release set for the film, late 2018 or early 2019 wouldn’t be too surprising to monetize on the momentum from the original animated film.