While Paramount may have been unhappy to lose J.J. Abrams' directorial services to the Star Wars universe once again, the studio is staying in business with him, as he's setting up a live-action adaptation of much-loved anime movie Your Name.
This is one sure to send the sales of pitchforks and torches through the roof as its decried even before a frame is seen, but Abrams is carefully building the team to make the new film. He's producing alongside Genki Kawamura, who helped shepherd the 2016 original, and has the Toho Co. team involved too. Plus he's won the blessing of the anime's writer and director, Makoto Shinkai. "Your Name is a film created with the innate imaginations of a Japanese team and put together in a domestic medium," Shinkai said 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."
Oscar-nominated Arrival writer Eric Heisserer is attached to write a new take on the story, which finds small-town high-school girl named Mitsuha and a Tokyo boy of the same age named Taki inexplicably start possessing each other’s bodies in randomly occurring day-long bouts. A weird relationship develops between the pair...
With his specific filmmaking focus elsewhere, Abrams and his Bad Robot company will be tracking down someone to direct. Fingers crossed they can handle this one sensitively.