Six years after agreeing to bring a new version of Ang Lee’s landmark 1993 romantic comedy “The Wedding Banquet” to the screen, Andrew Ahn’s adaptation is ready for takeoff. A world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, this new “Wedding Banquet” is a decidedly contemporary tale that is just as poignant as the original was over three decades ago. And Ahn owes a lot of that big screen magic to an incredible cast including “Saturday Night Live” icon Bowen Yang, SAG Award winner Lily Gladstone, “Star Wars” stand out Kelly Marie Tran, South Korean heartthrob Han Gi-chan, and the legendary Joan Chen, and “Minari” Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung.
READ MORE: Bowen Yang and Lily Gladstone’s surprising connection before “The Wedding Banquet”
Yang told The Playlist he wasn’t sure when he committed to reunite with his “Fire Island” director (Ahn says he has the receipts via text), but Gladstone was a different story. Ahn reveals that he was scheduled to meet with the “Killers of the Flower Moon” star the morning after the 2024 Golden Globes. After she won the trophy, he expected her to postpone the meeting. She decidedly did not.
Ahn recalls, “I showed up to her hotel with a bouquet of flowers, and I told her I would’ve fully understood if you didn’t want to meet with me today. And she said, ‘I am an actor. I want to go back to work, and I love your script.’ And I just was like, ‘Oh, she’s such a real one.’ And there was this really wonderful connection between Lily and Bowen. She’s always wanted to work with him. She wanted to meet him. And it’s so interesting. I can imagine a lot of people wouldn’t expect to see a movie where they’re both cast, but they were the first two. And I love how the entire ensemble just feels like such a spiky, fun, generous little family.”
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The Playlist: I thought that this was a project that had come to you after “Fire Island,” but Bowen told me that you’d been working on this for quite some time before. When did you first start this journey?
Andrew Ahn: Yeah, so the producers had the conversation first. They were kind of scheming, and so Anita Gou and Caroline Clark, with [production company] Kindred Spirit, had spoken to James Schamus and Joe Pirro. And Anita and Caroline held the rights to “The Wedding Banquet “and wanted to ask James if he would give his blessing. And James and Ang talked, and they decided that only if it was the right filmmaker. And James and Joe had just produced my film “Driveways,” and they knew I was gay, they knew I was Asian, and they knew that I loved “The Wedding Banquet.” And so I met with Anita Gou at Sundance 2019, and very quickly went into a development process with them and started writing right away.
Was this a pandemic project for you? Was this something you were actively working on during the stay-at-home?
Oh, totally. Yes. Yeah, it was something that we had so many hurdles, right? There was a pandemic, and then there was “Fire Island.” I had to put this on the back burner . It was great to have a co-writer and James Schamus, because he could kind of keep things going. And then, of course, we had the writer’s strike, and then we had the actor strike. So, a lot of random hurdles. And so even though we’ve been working on this for six years, it hasn’t been boring. I’ll say that.
It’s 2019, you’re sitting down to write this new version. What was your first inspiration that made it into the final film?
I mean, I wanted it to be Korean because I’m Korean. That was important to me. And then I think what was really helpful was just this first thought experiment where I wondered what if the Wei-Wei from the original film was also queer and had a lesbian partner. And so suddenly you have these two queer couples. And I matched that with what’s changed for the queer community since 1993. And for me, those two things were gay marriage, now that we can get married, do we want to, and then having children, it’s more of an option now than it was before. And so instead of accidentally having a baby, what if you were trying to plan to have a baby? And so I gave one couple marriage, and I gave another couple kids, and it just kind of organically came from there. Fortunately, there was a lot of personal material that I could draw from because I’ve been in this phase in my life where I’m talking about these things with my boyfriend. And so I drew a lot of inspiration from our conversations and my feelings and his feelings.
So, who do you think you are among the four main characters?
Oh, it’s very easy. [Laughs.] It is a little reductive because they’ve changed a bit. But I am Lee [Bowen Yang] and Min [Han Gi-chan], and my boyfriend is Angela [Kelly Marie Tran] and Chris [Lily Gladstone]. I’m the one that I know I want to get married and I know I want to have kids. And so in some ways, making the film was kind of trying to understand his position a little more. And then it’s, of course, also a very wish-fulfillment thing because of what ends up happening in the film.
You add this whole new narrative thread to the original screenplay. And in theory, that makes things more complicated. Was it harder to make those storylines work than you thought it might be?
I mean, it was an incredibly complex screenplay to write just because of the number of characters we were now juggling and the nuances of their drama. I remember having to really explain to people what performative allyship is in order to understand May, Joan Chen’s character. And there was a conversation about, well, should we just make it a little easier on ourselves and have May just be a disapproving Asian mom? And I was like, no, that story’s already been told. This is more fun. It’s more interesting, it’s more nuanced. But that meant having to articulate those nuances. So, there was a lot of engineering that needed to happen in order to spin all these plates. And these are also hard plates to spin, kind of high degree of difficulty, but we felt really positive about where we got with the screenplay and then started sharing it with actors and kind of worked with the actors to then really breathe these characters into life.
Bowen says he does not remember saying yes. He just remembers going to shoot it or being told he was going to shoot it. He’s a busy guy. So much stuff is going on in his life. Did he actually say yes, or did his agent say yes and commit him to it without him knowing?
I have a text message. It’s like I have the receipts! It was actually pretty wild. He was at Disney World with Matt Rogers when he read the screenplay, and I know this because of Instagram, and I checked in with him, and he was like, “I’m in.” And so it was very exciting. I loved working with him on “Fire Island” because I think he’s such a special performer, and I hope to continue working with him in the future.
He was the first one who committed. Who came on board next? And did that help you get the rest of the cast, or was it more organic once Bowen was attached?
I think the next one was Lily. I had a meeting set with Lily that I realized was the day after the Golden Globes. And I said to Joe Pirro, “If Lily Gladstone wins, she’s not going to come to my meeting. She’s going to be hungover, she’s going to be partying.” And then she won her Golden Globe for “Killers of the Flower Moon.” I was so happy for her. And then the next day she confirmed the meeting, I showed up to her hotel with a bouquet of flowers, and I told her I would’ve fully understood if you didn’t want to meet with me today. And she said, “I am an actor. I want to go back to work, and I love your script.” And I just was like, “Oh, she’s such a real one.” And there was this really wonderful connection between Lily and Bowen. She’s always wanted to work with him. She wanted to meet him. And it’s so interesting. I can imagine a lot of people wouldn’t expect to see a movie where they’re both cast, but they were the first two. And I love how the entire ensemble just feels like such a spiky, fun, generous little family.
Han Gi-chan, who plays Min, is hilarious. How did you find him, and how did you know he could pull this off? Because I don’t believe English is his first language.
I had seen him in a BL show. BL is Boys Love. It’s like a gay drama in Korea. And I didn’t know if he spoke English, but we had sourced a few audition tapes out of Korea, and I was so surprised that he could speak English very well. And that was just something that he had learned growing up. He’s watching a lot of American TV and film, and there was another actor that we had auditioned who was great and had Golden Retriever energy. Kean has Poodle energy, and I love that. That’s so, Min and Gi-Chan is also visual artist. He paints, and that I think tied him to the character. And so I just saw kind of how naturally charismatic he was, and I could see how he could pull off both the comedy and absurdity of the character, but also the immense heart that the character has.
Were you concerned at all that he might not have chemistry with Bowen and the rest of the cast without auditioning with them?
I had a general feeling that it would work out. I think, on top of casting people who are emotionally right for each character, I think it’s important to cast for the set environment and just wanting to make sure that people will treat each other with respect and be open and generous. Collaborators worked very hard to really gather that kind of cast and crew. Our casting director, Jenny Jue, she’s incredible. She was the casting director on “Okja” and “Snowpiercer.” We did our homework. We talked through every character, we talked through every actor. When we brought everybody to Vancouver, it did feel like it just kind of snapped into place. Of course, there’s a bit of luck in that, but I think there was something about how all of the actors were just so generous with each other that it allowed them to be really vulnerable.
When did you breathe a sigh of relief that, “O.K., this cast clicks, we’re gonna pull it off?”
I mean, you have an inkling, and I’ll say for Joan, my inkling was the lion dance. We had a rehearsal where she was grinding up with the lion, and I was like, “Great, perfect. You are this mom. And she was so committed to it. And then with [Youn Yuh-jung], the very first scene that we shot was the reconciliation scene where she tells Min, “You’ll always be my grandson.” And it’s such a beautiful moment. It’s kind of the climax of their storyline. And we did a rehearsal, and our stand-ins were weeping, and I was like, “Good, great. We got it. This is going to work.” But yeah, such legends. A legend of Chinese cinema, a legend of Korean cinema. I can’t believe I got to make this film with both of ’em. And it took a cross-cultural movie in order to get these two legends to get to work together.
“The Wedding Banquet” is now in theaters.
