Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures revealed on Wednesday that director Jon M. Chu will helm a stage musical based on Kwan’s “Crazy Rich Asians” trilogy. The musical also will be based on Warner Bros.’s 2018 film adaptation of the first novel, which Chu directed.
Playwright Leah Nanako Winkler will write the book, which will feature music by Helen Park and lyrics by Amanda Green and Tat Tong. Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures said a timeline for a “pre-Broadway” engagement will be announced at a later date.
While the “Crazy Rich Asians” musical will be Chu’s Broadway debut, he’s no stranger to bringing popular stage productions to the screen. In 2021, Chu directed the movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning “In the Heights.” Later that year, he was unveiled as the director for Universal Pictures’ “Wicked.”
Chu’s “Wicked,” starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, will be split into two chapters, with the first installment to premiere in November and the second in 2025. Last year, Chu was tapped to direct a film adaptation of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” for Amazon Studios, Deadline reported.
Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures’ press release described the new “Crazy Rich Asians” musical as “a fun, engaging and hilarious look at what can happen when young love collides with old money.”
Chu’s 2018 “Crazy Rich Asians” starred Constance Wu as an Asian American woman struggling to prove herself to her boyfriend’s (Henry Golding) extravagantly wealthy and extremely selective loved ones in Singapore. When it was released, “Crazy Rich Asians” was the first American-made movie to tout an all-Asian cast since 1993‘s “The Joy Luck Club.” The cast also included Michelle Yeoh, Awkwafina, Ken Jeong, Gemma Chan and Nico Santos.
“Crazy Rich Asians,” with a screenplay co-written by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim, dominated the box office for weeks following its release.
“I remember growing up as a kid and not seeing a lot of people on the big screen, or even behind the screen, that looked like me,” Chu recalled to The Times in 2018. “So the fact that we get to show romantic leads in a contemporary movie, showing this experience of an Asian American going out into the world and discovering Asia, that we’re not just one blob of Asian people, means so much.”
News of Chu’s upcoming musical comes amid uncertainty for the “Crazy Rich Asians” film franchise. In 2022, Deadline reported that an adaptation of Kwan’s sequel “China Rich Girlfriend” was in the works, but since then its status has remained unclear. A representative for Warner Bros. Pictures did not immediately provide more details about the project to The Times.