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Paramount and J.J. Abrams are teaming to adapt Your Name, an anime film that is one of the biggest hits of all time in Japan.
Eric Heisserer, who was nominated for an Oscar for penning the script to the Denis Villeneuve-directed sci-fi drama Arrival, is on board to write the screenplay for the adaptation, which will be live-action.
Abrams will produce via his Bad Robot Productions along with the banner’s Lindsey Weber. Also producing is Genki Kawamura, the producer of the original 2016 film.
Your Name, a sci-fi infused love story, centered on a teenage boy and girl from different parts of Japan who discover they can swap bodies. They also discover they are separated by time as well as by space, and when an impending space disaster threatens one of their towns, they must find a way to meet and stop it from happening.
Makoto Shinkai wrote and directed the original pic, which became the fourth-highest grossing film of all time in Japan and the highest-grossing anime film at the worldwide box office, earning $355 million. It was also nominated for best animated movie of the year at the 40th Japan Academy Prize.
“Your Name is a film created with the innate imaginations of a Japanese team and put together in a domestic medium,” Shinkai said Wednesday 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.”
Paramount and Bad Robot will work with Toho Co., which produced the original, on the development of the new project. Toho will handle distribution of the film in Japan.
The original Your Name was executive produced by Minami Ichikawa, Keiji Ota and Yoshihiro Furusawa via Toho and Noritaka Kawaguchi via CoMix Wave Films.
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