According to Deadline, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) is officially no longer set to direct and write Paramount Pictures’ long-in-development film adaptation of Makoto Shinkai’s hit fantasy anime pic Your Name. His withdrawal from the live-action project was reportedly due to scheduling conflicts. The outlet notes that the studio has already started talking to several potential filmmakers to replace Chung.
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The live-action Your Name movie hails from Paramount Pictures, Bad Robot Productions, and Toho. It will be produced by Bad Robot’s J.J. Abrams and original producer Genki Kawamura. Toho is set to handle Japanese distribution of the film and Paramount distributing it to all other territories.
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Before Lee Isaac Chung signed on to the project last year, Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man) was originally attached to helm the movie. The screenplay’s most recent draft was written by Emily V. Gordon (The Big Sick), who was, in turn, working off the original draft written by Arrival‘s Eric Heisserer.
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First released in Japan in 2016 and in the US in 2017, Your Name is a romantic fantasy movie centered around Tokyo high schooler Taki Tachibana and Mitsuha Miyamizu from the rural Itomori, who discover they have the ability to switch bodies with one another. As a natural disaster threatens to destroy their lives, they must journey to meet each other and save their worlds before it’s too late.
Since its debut, it was an instant success with a gross of over $303 million in Japan alone and became one of the country’s biggest hits. Because of this, a bidding war arose when the rights to multimedia adaptations hit the market in 2017.
