Director Jon M. Chu has always had an eye for musical movement and comedic filmmaking. Those talents will be shown off once more on the 2024 movie schedule, thanks to Wicked: Part One’s release being slated to take place this November. But for some of his fans, the 2018 film adaptation of Crazy Rich Asians still resembles one of the best rom-coms of recent years that many are hoping to revisit.
And thanks to some recent news, there’s definitely more of author Kevin Kwan’s literary world on the way. But after reading this new announcement, I’m baffled that these plans have nothing to do with finally bringing China Rich Girlfriend to the big screen.
Warner Bros’ Current Plan For More Crazy Rich Asians
So what is going on with Crazy Rich Asians? Well, thanks to Deadline sharing the news from Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures, we now know that a musical adaptation of the Crazy Rich Trilogy that inspired the Henry Golding/Constance Wu starring film is in development.
What’s more, Jon M. Chu will be making his debut as a Broadway director, along with the talents of Elsbeth writer/co-executive producer Leah Nanako Winkler tackling the book, as well as music by Helen Park and Amanda Green & Tat Tong’s lyrics. There’s no further information signaling when to expect this show to go up, however this report teased that “the timeline for a pre-Broadway engagement will be announced shortly.”
So there’s a possibility that Crazy Rich Asians’ staged incarnation has already been constructed, and merely awaits the casting, out of town tryouts, and tweaks any healthy Broadway show usually undergoes. If that’s the reality, it only leaves me to scratch my head further when pondering the fate of China Rich Girlfriend.
What’s Going On With Crazy Rich Asians' Theatrical Sequels?
Crazy Rich Asians was not only one of 2018’s box office smashes, it’s the first installment of Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Trilogy. With both China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems already published by time that first film came out, plans to adapt Kwan’s remaining two books back to back were made in the same year of the first film’s release. But seeing as those projects were scheduled to get underway in 2020, and we’re currently living in the wake of 2021’s Warner Bros. Discovery merger, it seems that things have changed a bit.
In 2022, hope for the franchise’s revival was still in play. Constance Wu was not only given an encouraging update from one of the franchise’s producers that same year, but a potential Gemma Chan-centric spinoff was also announced. As you can tell, there really hasn’t been any further updates past that point, which has me seriously wondering if we’ll ever get any of these sequels.
Crazy Rich Asians was a groundbreaking rom-com hit that played to the genre’s strengths, while also boosting Asian representation on the big screen. So to see the development of a Broadway musical is still pretty cool, but I hope that doesn’t mean the rest of the cinematic sequels have been canceled as a result. Perhaps the movement on this new musical means that Warner Bros. Discovery’s interest in the overall IP is still in play, and fans shouldn’t think that the studio has turned its back after so many years.
We’ll have to wait and see how things play out with the next iteration of Crazy Rich Asians, as it dances its way into reality. In the meantime, the first half of Jon M. Chu’s Wicked cinematic adaptation will be flying into the movies, starting November 27th.
