It’s only gotten weirder, over the last few years, that Jon M. Chu has never been able to get any traction on a sequel to his 2018 blockbuster hit Crazy Rich Asians. After all, Chu’s no longer just “Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu”: He’s become something of a full-blown cottage industry, propelled most of all by the success of last year’s Wicked, and the expected performance of its sequel next month. This guy is the stud from which Warner Bros. is hanging pretty much all of its holiday hopes, which only makes the multiple fizzled attempts to build on his first big hit feel all the more incongruous.
But, no more: Chu swears that the previously announced Crazy Rich Asians sequel show is the real deal, with scripts written, and production ready to go—just as soon as he gets a green light. (God only knows when that’ll be, since he’s also still on the hook to do a lot of other stuff, including directing a Hot Wheels move for J.J. Abrams for some unfathomable reason.) Chu was making these promises during a recent conversation with Esquire, where he swears up and down that there will actually be more Crazy Rich Asians at some point. “It’s a real thing. We have scripts, and we’re waiting to be officially ready to go. Our cast will be there.” (Chu does not then specify “our cast,” which feels like it could be a major sticking point for translating the film’s universe into TV.)
Meanwhile, Chu also talked a bit about the difficulties in adapting Kevin Kwan’s follow-up novel to Crazy Rich Asians, China Rich Girlfriend, for the screen: “It’s hard to do the continuation of the books,” he told Esquire. “Because our characters changed so much in the first movie. It’s so different [from] the books, actually, even though it feels like it’s the same. So you couldn’t go one-to-one. But we can use a lot of inspiration from the book to dig out more story from it.”
News of the TV continuation began circulating back in February, i.e., right after Chu handed Warner Bros. his latest fresh basket of money.
