XJT

The sequel to a $239 million movie fell apart over a $110,000 offer. And the writer who walked away just got handed the entire franchise. Crazy Rich Asians cost Warner Bros $30 million in 2018 and grossed $239 million worldwide. First studio film with an all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club in 1993. A sequel should have been greenlit before opening weekend ended. Instead the franchise went dark for seven years. The unraveling started with the pay offers. Co-writer Peter Chiarelli, the veteran who wrote The Proposal, was offered $800,000 to $1 million for the sequel. Adele Lim, the writer Jon M. Chu brought in to give the script its cultural voice, was offered around $110,000. Chiarelli offered to split his own fee with her. She turned it down, said what she makes shouldn't depend on the generosity of the white-guy writer, and quit. Warner Bros came back months later with an offer near parity. She passed on that too. Without her, the sequel never recovered. Chu left to make In the Heights and then Wicked. Two separate sequel attempts collapsed. The most bankable rom-com of its decade produced nothing for most of a decade. Now look at the structure of what got announced. The HBO series runs through Lim's own production company, 100 Tigers, with Lim as showrunner, writer, and executive producer. Chu and Kevin Kwan are EPs on her show. Constance Wu, Henry Golding, and Michelle Yeoh are all back. In 2019 the studio wouldn't match her co-writer's $800,000. In 2027 the same studio is putting the whole franchise in her hands. Walking away from the biggest credit of her career looked like a terrible move for a first-time feature writer. It turned out to be the trade that got her everything.