Back in December, I saw actress Joan Chen in San Francisco speaking at a special community screening of Didi, where she mentioned that she was in an upcoming remake of Ang Lee’s classic, The Wedding Banquet, that was going to be released in 2025. Well, the remake just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, to rave reviews, scoring 95% “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes (when this was written). According to the trailer description, the remake is as follows:
“From Director Andrew Ahn comes a joyful comedy of errors about a chosen family navigating the disasters and delights of family expectations, queerness, and cultural identity. Angela and her partner Lee have been unlucky with their IVF treatments, but can’t afford to pay for another round. Meanwhile their friend Min, the closeted scion of a multinational corporate empire, has plenty of family money but a soon-to-expire student visa. When his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chris rejects his proposal, Min makes the offer to Angela instead: a green card marriage in exchange for funding Lee’s IVF. But their plans to quietly elope are upended when Min’s skeptical grandmother flies in from Korea unannounced, insisting on an all-out wedding extravaganza. With a pitch-perfect cast of multigenerational talent that includes Bowen Yang, Academy Award nominee Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, Han Gi-chan, Joan Chen, and Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung, this fresh reimagining of Ang Lee’s beloved, Award-winning rom-com teems with humour and heart in a poignant reminder that being part of a family means learning to both accept and forgive.””
I wondered why a remake was being done, and here is part of the backstory from this Washington Post article, ‘Remake of Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet is a buzzy Sundance hit’:
“That opportunity began with a call from Anita Gou, a producer working for the Taiwanese Central Motion Picture Corporation, the government-run agency that had produced Lee’s original. As part of a new initiative to revisit some of its back catalogue, the company had the blessing of [Ang] Lee and his longtime collaborator, writer and film producer James Schamus, to reimagine “The Wedding Banquet.” Schamus had hired Ahn to direct 2019’s “Driveways,” in which a young Asian American boy forms an unexpected friendship with the retired Korean War veteran next door, after watching Ahn’s first film, “Spa Night,” a gay coming-of-age story set in a Korean spa. In the intervening years, Ahn had also directed the hit Hulu comedy “Fire Island,” starring Bowen Yang and Joel Kim Booster.”
“Andrew was our first and only recommendation and immediately embraced!” Schamus, who later joined Ahn to co-write the “Wedding Banquet” script, told The Washington Post by email.”
The film is scheduled to open on Friday, April 18th, and I can’t wait. I’ve seen the original The Wedding Banquet, which was a film ahead of its time when released back in 1993. I look forward to possibly doing another “Gold Open” buyout for the film, like I have for Crazy Rich Asians, Joy Ride and Didi.
