Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Cast

Production

On November 24, 2008, it was announced that a movie was to be produced that involved both American and Japanese actors and staff with Maki Horikita and Kenichi Matsuyama in the lead roles. The director of the movie was Hans Canosa who had been active in American movies. The script was written by Gabrielle Zevin the author of the novel “Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac” on which this movie was based on. When the movie was announced it was given the working title of “Lost Memories”. Filming began on November 26, 2008 and ended at the beginning of January 2009.

Originally, it was planned to film and produce the movie in America. However, the director decided that it would be better to make the movie in Japan where the cultural aspects of the setting would enrich the story. Therefore, he took the project to the Japanese movie companies after which production began. The high school setting in the original story was changed to an international school for the movie and apart from the staff and cast everything concerned with filming the movie used Japanese methods. This meant that the movie contained approximately a quarter of the English conversation as was in the original story.

Release

The release date for the movie was not disclosed for a long time following the announcement that it was to be produced. However, it was officially announced on October 11, 2009 that the movie would open in March 2010. At the same time as the announcement, the title of the movie was changed from “Lost Memories” to “Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac”.

When it opened at 247 cinemas screens throughout Japan, it was listed as 10th on the Japanese Box office rankings (according to Kogyo Tsushinsha) for the first two days between March 27 to 28, 2010 and made 48,909,800 yen with 8,598 people going to see the movie.