Hollywood Live-Action Film of Makoto Shinkai's Your Name. Is in the Works

Paramount Pictures and J. J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions have revealed that they will be producing a live-action Hollywood adaptation of Makoto Shinkai’s record breaking Kimi no Na wa. (your name.) anime film. J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Lost) and Lindsey Weber from Bad Robot will be producing the film along with the original film’s producer Genki Kawamura. Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Eric Heisserer (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Arrival) will be composing the script. Paramount and Bad Robot will be collaborating with original producer TOHO, who will distribute the film in Japan.

Regarding the Hollywood live-action film, Makoto Shinkai said:

“Your Name is a film created with the innate imaginations of a Japanese team and put together in a domestic medium,” said Shinkai in a statement. “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.”

Here is the trailer of the anime film with English subtitles:

Makoto Shinkai is a well known anime director who got his start in the industry in 1997 directing the short film Other Worlds. His first major breakthrough in the industry was 2002’s Voices of a Distant Star, which won various awards including the Animation Kobe award and the Seiun Award. Since his debut 20 years ago, his films have received acclaim and recognition for the films’ plot, use of mature themes and breathtaking visuals. One of his more recent hits is 2007’s 5 Centimeters Per Second, which won the award for Best Animated Feature Film at the 2007 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Shinkai’s most recent feature film is 2013’s The Garden of Words.

Anime visual:

Your Name. (Kimi no Na wa.) is a 2016 Japanese animated drama film written and directed by Makoto Shinkai and produced by CoMix Wave Films. The film was produced by Noritaka Kawaguchi and Genki Kawamura, with music composed by Radwimps. Based on Shinkai’s novel of the same name published a month before the film’s premiere, Your Name tells the story of a high school girl in rural Japan and a high school boy in Tokyo who swap bodies. The film stars the voices of Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Masami Nagasawa, and Etsuko Ichihara.

Your Name was distributed by Toho, it premiered at the Anime Expo 2016 convention in Los Angeles, California on 3 July 2016, and in Japan on 26 August 2016. It received widespread acclaim from critics, who praised the film for its animation and emotional impact, and was also a major commercial success, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time in Japan, the 7th-highest-grossing traditionally animated film, the highest-grossing anime and Japanese alike film and the 4th-highest-grossing non-English film worldwide, with a total gross of more than $355 million. The film won the 49th Sitges Film Festival, 2016 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards and 71st Mainichi Film Awards for Best Animated Feature Film, as well as receiving a nomination for the 40th Japan Academy Prize for the Best Animation of the Year. A live-action remake in currently in the works.

Your Name. (Kimi no Na wa.) synopsis:

Mitsuha Miyamizu, a high school girl, yearns to live the life of a boy in the bustling city of Tokyo—a dream that stands in stark contrast to her present life in the countryside. Meanwhile in the city, Taki Tachibana lives a busy life as a high school student while juggling his part-time job and hopes for a future in architecture.

One day, Mitsuha awakens in a room that is not her own and suddenly finds herself living the dream life in Tokyo—but in Taki’s body! Elsewhere, Taki finds himself living Mitsuha’s life in the humble countryside. In pursuit of an answer to this strange phenomenon, they begin to search for one another.

Kimi no Na wa. revolves around Mitsuha and Taki’s actions, which begin to have a dramatic impact on each other’s lives, weaving them into a fabric held together by fate and circumstance.