Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) and Bowen Yang (SNL) have been tapped to star in a reimagining of Ang Lee’s classic romance The Wedding Banquet from filmmaker Andrew Ahn (Fire Island), Deadline can confirm.
The original film’s co-writer and producer James Schamus will join Joe Pirro in producing for Symbolic Exchange, alongside Anita Gou and Caroline Clark for Kindred Spirit. Jordan Hart will co-produce, with Andrew Karpen, Shivani Rawat, Kent Sanderson, Julie Goldstein, Sam Intili and Daniel Bekerman exec producing. Kelly Marie Tran, Yuh-jung Youn and Joan Chen will also star in the remake scripted by Ahn and Schamus.
Bleecker Street and ShivHans Pictures have co-acquired North American rights and have slated the film for release in theaters next year. Production kicks off in Vancouver next month.
Marking Lee’s sophomore feature, The Wedding Banquet follows Wai-Tung, a gay Taiwanese-American, who agrees to marry Wei-Wei, an artist in need of a green card, to please his traditional parents. Complications arise when his parents visit for the wedding, leading to the revelation of Wai-Tung’s homosexuality and eventual acceptance. Premiering in Berlin, where it won the Golden Bear, the film went on to score Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Foreign-Language Film, along with six Independent Spirit Award nominations, cementing Lee’s status as a filmmaker on the rise.
Coming off her first Oscar nomination for her starring role in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Gladstone can currently be seen starring opposite Riley Keough on Hulu’s true crime drama series Under the Bridge.
Currently a cast member on SNL, Yang will later this year be seen in Universal’s adaptation of the musical Wicked.
An Independent Spirit Award winner best known for his queer rom-com Fire Island, released on Hulu in June 2022, Ahn prior to that helmed the acclaimed Sundance drama Spa Night. Additionally, he’s directed episodes of numerous series, including Generation, MacGyver, Gentefied and others.
News of the new Wedding Banquet film was first reported by Variety.
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