“Crazy Rich Asians” is breaking down barriers at the box office and on the small screen. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the commercial and critical hit directly influenced ABC’s decision to develop an hourlong Hawaiian family drama from writer/journalist Lisa Takeuchi Cullen. Cullen referenced “Crazy Rich Asians” while pitching the project, and it was officially sold the day of the rom-com’s premiere.
“The landscape has shifted dramatically in the last 12 months, and maybe in the last week,” she told THR, referencing the renewed interest and demand for Asian and Asian-American stories “Crazy Rich Asians’s” box office and critical success has inspired.
Titled “Ohana,” Cullen’s show is based on Kiana Davenport’s 1994 novel “Shark Dialogues.” It’s about four hapa (a Hawaiian term for mixed race) women who inherit the family plantation when their grandmother, a kahuna (e.g. a mystic), dies under mysterious circumstances. “Each of the four protagonists is of a different mixed ethnicity — half-white, half-Japanese, half-Filipino, and half-black — and their unexpected shared inheritance will force them to overcome years of jealousies, misunderstandings, resentments, and secrets,” the source details.
Cullen is writing the project, and Viola Davis and Julius Tennon will produce via their JuVee Productions.
“So many Hawaii-set stories have been told from the white point of view,” Cullen explained. “This is a story we’re passionate about telling from the point of view of native Hawaiians — Pacific Islanders, people of Asian descent, and people of hapa heritage.”
“‘Ohana is Hawaiian for ‘family,’ and that is a big part of who we are and what we want JuVee to support: embracing cultures and points of view from all over the world and showing that we all can relate and connect to each other,” Davis and Tennon said in a statement.
Davis stars in and produces ABC’s “How to Get Away with Murder.” The crime thriller soap will return for a fifth season on September 27. Davis toplines mob drama “Widows,” out November 16. Her other upcoming projects include “Troupe Zero,” the plot of which is being kept mum, and female African warrior story “The Woman King.”
Cullen worked as a staff writer and foreign correspondent at Time, and has written two books: memoir “Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death” and novel “Pastors’ Wives.” She wrote and produced the 2013 CBS pilot “The Ordained,” which centered on a priest-turned-lawyer from a Kennedy-esque family.
“Crazy Rich Asians” has grossed over $44 million since its August 15 release, and a sequel is reportedly in the works.
