It’s a great news for Asian communities, “Crazy Rich Asian 2” is officially underway. After the original film made a significant marks in The Hollywood industry as well as boasting Asian talents and the box office success, Jon M. Chu’s follow-up has found a new writer to replace screenwriters Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim who involved in a pay disparity controversy.
Warner Bros. and Color Force have found a Chinese-Australian writer Amy Wang to pen the highly anticipated sequel, which will star Constance Wu and Henry Golding. Wang is a story editor on Netflix’s “Brothers Sun,” and has also worked on “From Scratch” and directed episodes of Facebook’s “The Birch.”
This update comes after “Crazy Rich Asians” co-writers Chiarelli and Lim were at the center of a pay dispute. Lim, a veteran TV writer, exited the sequel in 2019 after it was revealed Chiarelli was paid almost 10 times more. After Lim walked away from the deal, the studio reportedly spent months looking for a replacement of Asian heritage before circling back to Lim again. And this time, Chiarelli offered to split his pay with her, which she turned down again. Director Chu made a statement that he stands with Lim’s decision, but he also find it frustrating that he can’t work with Lim.
Sequels based on Kevn Kwan’s follow-up novels—Crazy Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems—were greenlit for a back-to-back production, but the sequel was delay due to the director Chu’s work on “In the Heights” and among other projects.
The original film starring Constance Wu as NYU economics professor Rachel Chu and Henry Golding as her rich Singaporean boyfriend Nick Young, the film followed Rachel as she visited Singapore to attend a wedding with Nick, and met with his disapproving mother played by Michelle Yeoh. The second book titled “China Rich Girlfriend,” follows Wu’s character Rachel discovering that her birth father was, in fact, a Shanghai elite.
