EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros and Color Force set up aspiring Chinese-Australian author Amy Wang to write Crazy Rich Asians 2, Deadline can reveal, replacing Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim after a wage parity controversy in 2019.
Wang is taking on sole writing duties for Jon M. Chu’s Henry Golding and Constance Wu sequel, Deadline understands, which follows 2018’s hit debut feature film that follows the experience of a Chinese-American professor who helped her boyfriend’s mega-rich family from Singapore gets to know. Gemma Chan, Lisa Lu, Awkwafina, Ken Jeong and Michelle Yeoh also starred in the first feature film.
The plot and further details are being kept under wraps for the anticipated sequel, with a third film also in the pipeline.
Wang is Story Editor at Netflix Brothers Sun by Brad Falchuk and Byron Wu and has also worked on the same streamer’s Zoe Saldana with From Scratch.
She is currently writing and directing a horror film for Paramount Players/QC Entertainment and has directed shows including an upcoming episode of Starz’s Blindspotting and Facebook’s The Birch. She won a Cannes Lion Award in 2018 for her short film Unnatural.
Wang is represented by Kaplan/Perrone and Jackoway, Austin, Tyerman.
In 2019, about a year after Crazy Rich Asians exploded at the box office, Lim walked out on the two planned sequels after it was revealed she was being paid nearly 10 times less than The Proposal writer Chiarelli, the business argument being that Chiarelli was one veteran feature writer and Lim mostly a TV writer.
Chu responded with a lengthy statement at the time, saying he stood by Lim and was proud “that she was able to stand up for her own worth and walk away when she felt like she was being undervalued.”
After the news broke, Chu said he spoke to Lim and Warner officials to try and reach parity, but by that time “a lot of time had passed and they declined the offer.”