It has been a long road developing the live-action American remake of the Japanese animated blockbuster, “Your Name.” After years of toiling away in development hell with folks like Erik Heisserer taking shots at the script, it appeared “Your Name” was being fast-tracked with “Minari” filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung recently named as the filmmaker. However, it appears Paramount is going back to the drawing board once again.
According to Deadline, Lee Isaac Chung has departed the development of “Your Name” over reported scheduling conflicts that are preventing him from continuing. You may remember Chung was brought on last September to write and direct the long-awaited American remake of the animated feature. Now, it appears Paramount and J.J. Abram’s Bad Robot production company are on the hunt for another filmmaker to bring the story to life.
“Your Name” tells the story of a young boy and a young girl that inexplicably switch bodies and have to figure out why it happened, while being in very different lives. The film won a ton of awards after its release in 2016 and still stands as one of the biggest box office hits in Japan’s history, earning more than $350 million worldwide.
Again, it’s unclear how much of a setback it is for Chung to depart the film, though you have to imagine it’s almost a complete reset opportunity for Paramount. Recently, the aforementioned Heisserer, the Oscar-nominated writer of “Arrival” and who was once attached to write the script for “Your Name,” talked about the project when he joined The Playlist Podcast. And in his experience, Heisserer thinks the films’ original studio, Toho, has very definite beliefs about what “Your Name” should look like.
“I’m very proud of that script,” he said about his draft of “Your Name.” “It’s a long process, and these types of adaptations require a lot of time and a lot of care and attention to make sure you get it right. And there are quite a number of voices in the room, as well. Toho has been intimately involved in that from that start. They have a definite set of beliefs on what makes the story work. It’s a high bar. But I can tell you, that from me, it’s the best work I’ve done since ‘Arrival.’”
So, is “Your Name” destined to be an American remake that will never happen? We’ll have to wait and see. But for now, we know for sure that Lee Isaac Chung will not be the filmmaker to bring it across the finish line.