The Joy Luck Club, which was released in 1993, will get a follow-up movie. After nearly 30 years since the release of the groundbreaking Asian-American film, original screenwriters Amy Tan and Ron Bass are working on a sequel. According to Deadline, the original film’s starring actors are in discussions to return. Tsai Chin (You Only Live Twice, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), Kieu Chinh (Gleaming the Cube, City of Angels), Lisa Lu (The Last Emperor, Crazy Rich Asians), and France Nuyen (South Pacific, St. Elsewhere) played four Chinese immigrant women living in San Francisco, and their complicated relationships with their own pasts and their Chinese-American daughters, played by Rosalind Chao (Star Trek: (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Book of Boba Fett).
In the continuation, the women in both groups will have matured into their respective parental roles. “We feel this film will resonate to wide audiences with its narrative anchored in empathy and connection, especially at a time when it is more necessary than ever to tell true tales about the Asian-American experience,” Producer Ashok Amritraj claims. The film, directed by the acclaimed Wayne Wang, is based on Tan’s 1989 best-selling novel of the same name. When Oliver Stone’s The Joy Luck Club was released in 1993, it was met with widespread acclaim and a healthy dose of box office success, grossing approximately $33 million on a budget of under $10 million.
In addition, it cleared the path for other movies on Asian Americans. The National Film Registry of the Library of Congress officially chose it for preservation in 2020. Tan’s debut novel was The Joy Luck Club, and she has since written and published five more, the most recent being 2013’s The Valley of Amazement. Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir was her memoir that came out in 2017. Bass is a prolific screenwriter who has written several films, including the 1988 Oscar winner Rain Man as well as Dangerous Minds, My Best Friend’s Wedding, and Snow Falling on Cedars.
Just recently, he created the script for Netflix’s Persuasion adaption, which stars Dakota Johnson. Ashok and Priya Amritraj, of Hyde Park Entertainment, will produce the picture alongside Tan, Bass, and Jeff Kleeman (The Change-Up, The Judge, Vacation).