Ang Lee announces first new film in years, Old Gold Mountain

Based on C. Pam Zhang's 2020 novel How Much Of These Hills Is Gold, the new film will be Lee's first since 2019 flop Gemini Man.

By William Hughes | June 5, 2025 | 10:15pm

Ang Lee, Photo: Olivia Wong/WireImage

Film News Ang Lee

Ang Lee announces first new film in years, Old Gold Mountain

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Ang Lee hasn’t directed a new movie in six years, with his last film being 2019 Will Smith bomb Gemini Man. (The movie that dared to ask whether two Will Smiths could be even less of a box office draw than one.) Lee has flirted around with a few projects in that time (he’s supposedly still working on a movie about boxing match The Thrilla In Manila, and has expressed an interest in a Bruce Lee biopic), but nothing concrete. Until now, as Deadline reports that the Brokeback Mountain director is returning to the geographic features that most inspire him, with a new film, Old Gold Mountain, in the works.

Lee’s new film will be based on C. Pam Zhang’s 2020 debut novel, How Much Of These Hills Is Gold, about two orphaned immigrant children traveling across the American West to bury their father. The screenplay for the movie has been penned by Hansol Jung, who recently wrote one of the episodes of the generation-spanning Pachinko; this’ll be Jung’s first official film script. No casting has been announced for the film, which might be a little tricky. Zhang’s novel uses a time-jumping structure that introduces its lead characters at 12 and 11, respectively, and then eventually jumps forward to when they’re 16 and 15, so we might end up seeing multiple sets of young actors take on the central roles of Lucy and Sam.