The good news is that China Rich Girlfriend, the sequel to summer blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians, has been greenlighted for production after the movie proved to be a monster hit.
The bad news is that it may take a while for China Rich Girlfriend to be made, because of the heavy schedule of director Jon M. Chu.
Crazy Rich Asians’ star Constance Wu, who plated protagonist Rachel Chu in the movie, said that the director’s plate for 2019 is already full.
“I don’t know much about the production side of things. But I know that Jon wants to direct the next one, and all next year he’s directing In The Heights,” the actress said at Vulture Festival in Los Angeles last Saturday, November 17.
Crazy Rich Asians was an enormous success when it opened in August, making over S$324 million around the globe. In the movie, which is based on a series of novels by Singaporean-American writer Kevin Kwan about the lives of the uber-rich, Wu’s character meets the family of her boyfriend, Nick Young, played by breakout star Henry Golding, and the luxurious circles they travel in. China Rich Girlfriend is followed by Rich People Problems, the final novel in the series.
Golding has been in the spotlight recently, due to the backlash he has received because he was raised in the United Kingdom, even though he was born in Malaysia and is half Iban.
“No one knows the three-dimensional story of who I am. Or anyone is. And coming from such a grounded culture as the Iban, you cannot get any more rooted in Asian culture. We’re native. But then, because I have my heritage of being British as well, it always negates that,” Golding explained.
Fans of the movie will be delighted to know that Gemma Chan’s character Astrid will have a bigger role in the sequel, though Nick and Rachel’s character still play central roles.
As for Wu, there’s a strong possibility that she may star alongside singer-actress Jennifer Lopez in a movie based on ‘The Hustlers at Scores,’ a magazine article which centers around strippers and their Wall Street clients.
Wu said, “I met the director of that movie, and I really liked it. I liked the script, and I liked the director…. It’s still something I’m thinking about…It’s a great story. It’s about these strippers who find these Wall Street douchebags and fleece them out of their money, and they got away with it for a while.”
Wu said she was unconcerned about how Crazy Rich Asians would do at the box office. “I knew there was a grossly underserved audience hungry for content, and the fact that it had been 25 years [since the last all-Asian cast studio film, The Joy Luck Club], was kind of built-in press, so I knew people were going to go and see it.”
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