Lily Gladstone, Bowen Yang to Lead Andrew Ahn’s New Take on ‘The Wedding Banquet’

Andrew Ahn (Fire Island, Driveways, Spa Night) will direct the romantic comedy The Wedding Banquet, with Bowen Yang (Dicks: The Musical, NBC’s Saturday Night Live), Academy Award-nominee Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon, Hulu’s Under the Bridge), Kelly Marie Tran (Star Wars sequel trilogy, Raya and the Last Dragon), Academy Award-winner Yuh-jung Youn (Minari, AppleTV’s Pachinko) and Joan Chen (the upcoming Dìdi, FX’s A Murder at the End of the World) attached to star. 

The film is a reimagination of Ang Lee’s 1993 Academy Award-nominated film of the same name, based on a script by Andrew Ahn and Academy Award-nominee James Schamus (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain).

Schamus is producing with partner Joe Pirro (We Grown Now, Driveways) under their Symbolic Exchange banner alongside Anita Gou (Honey Boy, The Farewell, The Silent Twins) and Caroline Clark (Found, Together Together) for Kindred Spirit. Jordan Hart is set to co-produce. Bleecker Street and ShivHans Pictures have co-acquired the North American rights with plans to release the film theatrically in 2025. Andrew Karpen, Shivani Rawat, Kent Sanderson, Julie Goldstein, Sam Intili and Daniel Bekerman will executive produce, with principal photography set to begin in May in Vancouver. Jenny Jue is serving as the casting director.

When Min’s boyfriend Chris rejects his spontaneous marriage proposal, he convinces his best friend Angela to marry him instead, paying for her partner Liz’s IVF treatments in exchange for his green card. Their plans for a subtle city hall elopement are turned upside down when Min’s grandmother makes a surprise trip from Seoul to throw them an extravagant Korean wedding banquet.

“It warms my heart to see how my film from so many years ago has inspired a new generation to reimagine a new and different version,” said Ang Lee, director of the original 1993 version of The Wedding Banquet. “I look forward to seeing what Andrew Ahn and his wonderful cast create.”

“I’m delighted to re-team with my longtime friend and colleague, James Schamus, on this inspired reimagining of a classic rom-com for the modern era,” said Andrew Karpen, Founder and CEO of Bleecker Street. “Andrew Ahn is a force to be reckoned with and I’m very excited to see the new heights that he and James will take this story to.”

Schamus also co-wrote the original 1993 film with Lee and Neil Peng, which was nominated for an Academy Award®, Golden Globe Award and won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. 

The film marks a reunion of sorts between Karpen and Schamus, who served as co-CEOs of Focus Features. Bleecker also previously collaborated with Kindred Spirit on Together Together in 2021.

Yang is known for “Saturday Night Live,” for which he has earned three Emmy nominations. Yang has also starred in A24’s Dicks: The Musical, Andrew Ahn’s critically acclaimed Fire Island for Searchlight Pictures, and Comedy Central’s “Awkwafina is Nora from Queens.” Yang is set to star alongside Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in the upcoming film adaptation of the acclaimed musical Wicked for Universal Pictures. 

Gladstone was recently nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Actress for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, making her the first Native American to be nominated in that category. She is currently starring in the Hulu limited series “Under the Bridge” alongside Riley Keough. Her starring turn in Morrisa Maltz’s The Unknown Country garnered her the Outstanding Lead Performance Award at the 2023 Gothams. Her breakout role came in 2016 from Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women and recent television turns include recurring roles in “Reservation Dogs” and “Billions.” She can next be seen starring in Erica Tremblay’s Fancy Dance, which will be released by Apple in June 2024.

Tran rose to prominence after portraying Rose Tico in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. She then went on to voice the leading role of Princess Raya in Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon, as well as The Croods: A New Age. She also starred in the drama series “Sorry for Your Loss,” and is set to join the third and final season of Netflix’s “Sweet Tooth.”

Youn is best-known internationally for her role as Soon-ja, the grandmother of a Korean immigrant family in rural America, in Minari, for which she was awarded the Academy Award® for Best Supporting Actress. She also recently appeared in the Apple TV+ drama “Pachinko,” directed by Kogonada and Justin Chon.

Chen is an actress and director who recently starred as Lu Mei in Hulu’s “A Murder at the End of the World” alongside Emma Corrin and Harris Dickinson and can also be seen in Sundance breakout Dìdi, which will release this Summer.

In addition to Fire Island, Ahn’s debut feature Spa Night premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival where it was awarded a Special Jury Prize and his second feature,Driveways, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019 and was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards.  Ahn took home Independent Spirit’s John Cassavetes Award and has also directed episodes of “Gentefied”, “MacGyver”, “Pride”, and “Generation”.

Gladstone is represented by IAG, Authentic Talent and Literary Management and McKuin Frankel Whitehead. Yang is repped by UTA, 3 Arts Entertainment and Schreck Rose Dapello Adams Berlin & Dunham. Tran is repped by CAA, M88, and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman, Smelkinson & Christopher. Youn by CAA and Echelon Talent Management. Chen by Inphenate and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman, Smelkinson & Christopher. Ahn is repped by CAA, Anonymous Content and Jerry Dasti at Sloss Eckhouse.