First Trailer for Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet Updates an Ang Lee Classic

Ang Lee may be taking some time getting his next movie off the ground as his Bruce Lee biopic aims to finally start production this year, but first, one of his early classics is getting a modern update. The latest from Driveways and Fire Island director Andrew Ahn is The Wedding Banquet, which brings together Lily Gladstone, Bowen Yang, Kelly Marie Tran, Joan Chen, Han Gi-chan, and Youn Yuh-jung, with a script co-written with James Schamus, who co-wrote and produced the original 1993 rom-com. Following its Sundance premiere and ahead of Bleecker Street’s spring release on April 18, the first trailer has now arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “From Director Andrew Ahn comes a joyful comedy of errors about a chosen family navigating the disasters and delights of family expectations, queerness, and cultural identity. Angela and her partner Lee have been unlucky with their IVF treatments, but can’t afford to pay for another round. Meanwhile their friend Min, the closeted scion of a multinational corporate empire, has plenty of family money but a soon-to-expire student visa. When his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chris rejects his proposal, Min makes the offer to Angela instead: a green card marriage in exchange for funding Lee’s IVF. But their plans to quietly elope are upended when Min’s skeptical grandmother flies in from Korea unannounced, insisting on an all-out wedding extravaganza. With a pitch-perfect cast of multigenerational talent that includes Bowen Yang, Academy Award nominee Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, Han Gi-chan, Joan Chen, and Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung, this fresh reimagining of Ang Lee’s beloved, Award-winning rom-com teems with humour and heart in a poignant reminder that being part of a family means learning to both accept and forgive.”

“Weddings are intensely important markers in the growth of your relationships, even fake ones. Through the process of planning it, of going through it, you grow in your relationships,” said Ahn. “I was really focused on trying to tell a story that felt reflective of the community as I’ve experienced it growing up.”

See the trailer and poster below.