In the delightful new rom-com Crazy Rich Asians — which consists of a principal cast entirely of Asian descent, a major feat in Hollywood — a college professor (Constance Wu) travels to her boyfriend’s old stomping grounds in Singapore to attend the most opulent wedding of her life. (And to survive the wrath of the women vying for her boyfriend’s attention. And her boyfriend’s intense mother.)
The film, an adaptation of the 2013 novel written by Kevin Kwan, is a major win for the Asian acting community, but in a new Hollywood Reporter feature, some behind-the-scenes drama nearly prevented it from being a faithful big-screen experience.
As Kevin recalled to the publication, he rejected numerous “lucrative” offers and instead optioned his film for a mere $1, forgoing a large paycheck to ensure he maintained involvement with creative and development decisions. This was, Kevin said, after one disastrous pitch strongly recommended he change the Asian heroine to a white woman, since nobody would be interested in seeing the film otherwise. (“It’s a pity you don’t have a white character,” he was told by the producer.) “To say, ‘I’m going to do this for a dollar,’ the only other person I know who does that is Stephen King,” Brad Simpson, one of the film’s producers who fought for Kevin’s vision, explained to THR of this significance. “You don’t want to just be another piece of development. With a movie like this, people are never going to have to make it, and it could get lost.”
Interestingly, Kevin and the film’s director, Jon M. Chu, also rejected an enticing offer for Crazy Rich Asians to be a Netflix-exclusive film — “dangling complete artistic freedom, a greenlighted trilogy and huge, seven-figure-minimum paydays for each stakeholder” — but the duo ultimately decided the need to bring Asian actors to the bonafide big screen was more of a priority. “Jon and I both felt this sense of purpose,” Kevin explained to THR. “We needed this to be an old-fashioned cinematic experience, not for fans to sit in front of a TV and just press a button.”
The results will soon speak for themselves — Crazy Rich Asians will be released in theaters, not on a streaming service, on August 15.
