Lee Isaac Chung will direct a live-action remake of Your Name

Lee Isaac Chung is an all-Amer­i­can suc­cess sto­ry: born to Kore­an immi­grants on a small farm in rur­al Arkansas, he stud­ied his way to Yale and swerved away from med­ical school to get his MFA. Then came a debut fea­ture praised at Cannes, a per­son­al dra­ma that won the top prize at this past January’s Sun­dance, and now he’s land­ed his first big Hol­ly­wood deal.

Dead­line perked up the drag of a Fri­day after­noon with the break­ing news that Chung has signed on to a planned live-action remake of the block­bust­ing Japan­ese ani­mat­ed film Your Name. He’ll not only direct but also revamp the script, tak­ing over from Emi­ly V. Gor­don of The Big Sick fame, who took over from Eric Heis­ser­er of Arrival fame.

In the pop­u­lar ani­mé, a teenaged boy in Tokyo and a high school girl in the rur­al Japan­ese coun­try­side start swap­ping bod­ies with­out any appar­ent cause or pat­tern. As they’re inex­orably drawn to one anoth­er by forces greater than either can imag­ine, an attrac­tion flow­ers between the two of them and cul­mi­nates in a stun­ning fusion of romance and sci-fi.

Direc­tor Mako­to Shinkai scored a mas­sive hit in Asia and around the globe, as the film climbed to become not just the high­est-gross­ing ani­mé fea­ture of all time, but the high­est-gross­ing Japan­ese film ever made.

How­ev­er, LWLies reg­u­lar Kam­bole Camp­bell made a valid point on Twit­ter, right­ly not­ing that ​“ani­ma­tion to live-action almost always sucks.” There’s a long and igno­min­ious tra­di­tion of failed attempts to bring ani­mé to a wider audi­ence through West­ern­iza­tion and live-action-ifi­ca­tion. Unless your last name is Wachows­ki, you’re play­ing a dan­ger­ous game.

Though it’s not as if Chung’s some gun for hire. His work has inspired near-uni­ver­sal rap­tur­ous notices from the press, and more specif­i­cal­ly, he excels in sto­ries of nature and still­ness – a bill that Your Name cer­tain­ly fits. A block­buster with gen­uine heart and smarts, that rarest trea­sure, may not be far off.