“Pachinko” is coming to the small screen. Apple has given a series order to a drama based on Min Jin Lee’s acclaimed bestselling novel, Deadline reports.
Published in 2017, “Pachinko” follows four generations of a Korean immigrant family. Described in its official synopsis as “a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty,” the plot unfolds “from bustling street markets to the halls of Japan’s finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld,” and its “complex and passionate characters — strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis — survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.” According to the source, the series will be told in three languages: Korean, Japanese, and English.
Soo Hugh is writing, executive producing, and serving as showrunner on “Pachinko.” Besides her most recent gig as exec producer and co-showrunner on AMC’s “The Terror,” her other credits include “The Killing” and “The Whispers.”
Among many other honors, “Pachinko” was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. “I think it’s not an accident that you don’t have that many Asian American women writers who are breaking out,” Lee has said. “I don’t think it’s an accident that you don’t have that many Asian American writers, either women or men. I don’t think that immigrants are encouraged to become artists. That’s very gendered and racialized and ethnicized. It’s not even just money, because in east Asia and southeast Asia and south Asia, our cultures aren’t encouraging women to speak about their stories. So it’s taken me a long time to say, ‘Okay, well this is what I’ve seen and I think it’s so worthwhile that I’m going to try to get it in print.’ I mean that’s an act of audacity, for somebody from my background!”
Other Apple series in the works include a CIA drama starring Brie Larson, an Octavia Spencer-led true crime drama, and a morning show-set drama with Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.