JJ Abrams to produce live-action adaptation of 'Your Name'

Paramount Pictures and  Star Wars: The Force Awakens director JJ Abrams' production house Bad Robot have announced a collaboration to adapt Makoto Shinkai's 'Your Name' into a live-action feature.

The announcement was made yesterday and said that the companies will collaborate with Toho, one of Japan's biggest production houses, to develop the adaptation, with Toho handling distribution in Japan.

Lindsay Weber and Abrams will produce the film at Bad Robot, with Genki Kawamura, one of the producers of the original film, returning to produce as well. The screenplay will be written by Arrival scribe Eric Heissner.

JJ Abrams is one of Paramount's go-to directors and has handled rebooting Star Trek for the production house. He has also directed Star Wars: The Force Awakens for LucasFilm and Disney and has produced the found-footage monster film 'Cloverfield'. He is currently attached to direct the as-yet-untitled Star Wars Episode IX.

Speaking on the announcement of the collaboration, Toho CEO Yoshishige Shimatani had this to say: “We are excited to collaborate with an extremely talented team in Hollywood, and to create with them a live-action version of the iconic Japanese film ‘Your Name.'”

At the announcement, Kawamura said that he feels Bad Robot will be able to do the story justice: "Until I met with the people from Bad Robot, I thought this was just a dream, but it seems it's the real thing now. I can't think of a better team to bring your name. to a rebirth than J. J. Abrams and his team. And Arrival, which Eric Heisserer wrote, was one of the most moving sci-fi films I've seen in recent years. I believe that Eric will depict the climax of your name., which mixes science fiction and a love story, in the best possible way."

'Your Name' follows the story of Taki, a boy from Tokyo, who starts switching bodies with Mitsuha, a rural girl who wants to live in the city, and how they work together to communicate with each other and understand their peculiar predicament. However, when they try to meet, Taki realises a secret about Mitsuha, which turns their budding relation into a race against time. The film is the highest-grossing anime film in the world, with over $355 million in box office collections and has received significant critical acclaim for its story and characterization.

Source: Anime News Network via Cinema Today.