Bowen Yang and Lily Gladstone help plot sham marriage in The Wedding Banquet trailer

The Wedding Banquet is a remake of the original 1993 rom-com from Ang Lee.

By Emma Keates  |  March 17, 2025 | 1:57pm
Photo: Luka Cyprian/Bleecker Street
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Bowen Yang and Lily Gladstone help plot sham marriage in The Wedding Banquet trailer

Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, and Han Gi-Chan cordially invite you to their fake wedding in the trailer for The Wedding Banquet, a remake of the original 1993 rom-com from Ang Lee. Marriage schemes almost never go according to plan, but they do make for a great time at the movies. This one appears to be no different.

The film follows “a chosen family of four friends,” per its official logline (via IndieWire). Angela (Tran) and her partner, Lee (Gladstone), want a child, but are struggling with the financial burden of multiple failed IVF treatments. Min (Han) and his “commitment-phobic boyfriend,” Chris (Yang), can’t agree on whether to take their relationship to the next level, an argument worsened by the fact that Min’s student visa is about to expire. In an attempt to solve both couple’s problems, Min proposes that he and Angela marry to secure his green card, in exchange for funding for Lee’s IVF treatment. It’s a (relatively) foolproof plan, until Min’s skeptical Korean grandmother comes to visit, and insists on an extravagant wedding.

The trailer sees the friends—and Angela’s ally mother, May (Joan Chen)—rushing to “de-queer” their physical and online presences in order to sell the lie, from deleting Instagram stories to removing Angela and Lee’s Lilith Fair poster, to a few hasty makeovers.

The film, which premiered earlier this year at Sundance, was written by original 1993 writer, James Schamus, and directed by Yang’s Fire Island collaborator, Andrew Ahn. “I’ve spent much of my adulthood coming to terms with how my queer identity would preclude me from participating in these types of Korean rituals, rituals celebrating family, rituals that bring you closer to family,” Ahn told Filmmaker Magazine of the film’s Korean wedding banquet earlier this year. “By writing and directing this film, I was able to reconcile my queer and Korean identities. With my cast and crew, my friends and family, I got to have a Korean wedding.”

The Wedding Banquet premieres April 18 in theaters.

 
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