The recent announcement that Star Wars director JJ Abrams is to make a live-action version of the record-breaking animated film Your Name has prompted a backlash among fans of the original who fear another Hollywood “whitewash” of a Japanese masterpiece.
Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions will collaborate with Toho, the anime’s Japanese distributor, and Paramount Pictures, to remake Your Name.
Your Name was “created with the innate imaginations of a Japanese team and put together in a domestic medium”, Shinkai said.
Shinkai said he was looking forward to seeing how Abrams, the director of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, would adapt his film.