After two and a half years in development limbo, the sequel to Warner Bros.’ 2018 sleeper smash Crazy Rich Asians is seemingly back on track with a new screenwriter on board.
The studio and production banner Color Force have hired relative newcomer Amy Wang to pen the follow-up film to the groundbreaking romantic comedy. Crazy Rich Asians was adapted by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim from Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel of the same name, the first book in a trilogy that also includes China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems.
Crazy Rich Asians grossed $238.5 million at the worldwide box office and has widely been credited as ushering in a culture shift in Asian American representation, but in 2019 The Hollywood Reporter exclusively revealed that Lim walked away from the sequel after producers initially offered her approximately a tenth of co-writer Chiarelli’s quote. The two are not a writing team; Color Force had first hired Chiarelli, a respected rom-com scribe ever since he penned 2009’s The Proposal, and when director Jon M. Chu joined the project he added Lim, who was at the time a longtime TV writer without feature credits. She has subsequently gone on to co-write Disney’s Oscar-nominated Raya and the Last Dragon and is making her directorial debut with an untitled comedy for Lionsgate.
After Lim’s departure, Chiarelli worked with Chu to develop a treatment for the sequel, even delivering a first draft to Warner Bros. in the summer of 2019, but progress and updates on the project stalled throughout the pandemic.
Now the creative team is ostensibly starting over with a single writer. Wang, who is Chinese and Australian, is a writer-director who won the Young Director Award at the Cannes Lions festival in 2018 for her short film Unnatural. She also has helmed an upcoming episode of Starz’s Blindspotting. In addition to penning the Crazy Rich Asians sequel, she also is slated to write and direct a horror feature for Paramount Players and QC Entertainment. She is represented by Kaplan/Perrone and Jackoway Austen.
Crazy Rich Asians featured an all-star ensemble including Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Awkwafina, Chris Pang, Sonoya Mizuno, Ken Jeong, Ronny Chieng and Jimmy O. Yang, led by Constance Wu and Henry Golding in his acting debut.
Deadline was first to report Wang’s hiring.
Source: HollyWood
