Update: Bleecker Street has picked up the film for a 2025 release.
Following up Driveways and Fire Island, Andrew Ahn is nearing production on his next feature, a remake of Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet. First confirmed to kick off production this May in Vancouver, The Cinemaholic reports the cast features Lily Gladstone, Bowen Yang, Kelly Marie Tran, Joan Chen, and Youn Yuh-jung. James Schamus, who co-wrote and produced the original 1993 rom-com, returned to script with Ahn.
Here’s the synopsis: “The plot revolves around Min, whose marriage proposal is rejected by his boyfriend Chris (Yang). Min then convinces his best friend Angela (Marie Tran) to marry him for his green card and offers to pay for the IVF treatment of the latter’s partner, Liz (Gladstone), in return. Although Min and Angela plan a “subtle city hall elopement,” their lives are turned upside down when the former’s grandmother arrives in Seattle to throw them an extravagant Korean wedding banquet.”
Lee’s original film, which won the Golden Bear at Berlinale, went on to become the most profitable film of 1993, earning almost $24 million worldwide on a budget of only around $1 million. It also received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film alongside Farewell My Concubine and The Scent of Green Papaya, although they all lost to Fernando Trueba’s Belle Époque.
“I’m out here trying to make as many queer Asian American things as possible so that people understand the diversity within the diversity,” Ahn said last year. “I think it’s so important to talk about intersectional identity and that being queer mixed with something else can really change the experience. It’s not simple math, you know? And so I wanted to talk about that complexity, that nuance, and I thought film is the perfect medium to do that because you have to witness a human being on screen. And the humanity there I think is so important to building empathy.”
Watch the trailer for Lee’s original film below.