Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, Han Gi-Chan and Bowen Yang in The Wedding Banquet
(Photo by Luka Cyprian/Bleecker Street)
STEVEN LINDSEY | Contributing writer
StevenCraigLindsey@GMail.com
Here we are in 2025, and making an LGBTQ-themed movie can still be a challenge. The same goes for getting a film with a predominantly Asian cast onto the big screen.
Now, imagine the challenge of producing a theatrical release where those two worlds collide.
The good thing is, queer Korean-American filmmaker Andrew Ahn has the industry cred to prove there’s an audience for queer Asian stories.
(Photo by JaniceChung)
His breakthrough film, Spa Night, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and took home a Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance. Next up, Driveways premiered in 2019. And in 2022, he experienced his most high-profile hit to date with Fire Island on Hulu.
Last week, The Wedding Banquet opened in theaters nationwide.
Ahn wrote and directed a modernized version of Ang Lee’s 1993 comedy for contemporary audiences. Both films feature queer Asian characters agreeing to heterosexual marriages for the sake of acquiring green cards and pleasing traditionalist parents.
Ahn joined Dallas Voice for a conversation about the film, as well as why audiences need to see queer Asian characters in media.
Dallas Voice: Hey, Andrew! Thanks for taking the time to chat about The Wedding Banquet. Now, if my math is correct, you were about seven years old when Ang Lee’s movie was released. When did you discover the movie, and what made you decide to update it more than 30 years later? Andrew Ahn: I think I saw it when I was eight years old, when it was on home video. My mom saw the VHS at the video rental store and rented it, not knowing that it was a queer film, and so we watched it as a family. And as a nascent gay boy, it kind of blew my mind. I very vividly remember the opening sequence where the main character is at the gym, and I remember thinking, “I like this,” but, you know, I didn’t know why, but I liked it.
I realize, in retrospect, that was the first gay film that I had ever seen, and the fact that it was a gay and Asian film feels really special. I watched the film later as an adult but never thought, “Oh, I’m going to be a filmmaker, and I’m going to remake this.” It wasn’t until 2019 when producers approached me about an update.
I was just so inspired because, like so many great films, it triggered a lot of different emotions in me. And a lot of that turned into the initial inspiration for the film. I thought a lot about getting married, having kids — all these conversations I’ve had with my boyfriend over the years. These subjects became my creative North Stars in this adaptation.
Do you think, many years after the first film, it’s any easier to make a queer gay film in Hollywood? I do think that there’s more opportunity to make Asian-American films now, and it’s something that I’ve been cultivating throughout my career. With Spa Night, Driveways and Fire Island, I’ve been working very hard to kind of till the soil.
I believe the financing for the original film came out of Taiwan, and this one had to be financed in the U.S., which made it a different kind of project. The original film was an indie.
And I think that the success of it, to even just play at your local art house theater, is incredible.
I think the vision for this movie from the get-go was, “Can we play it at AMCs?”
Given the current politics and everything, did you ever think when you were making this movie that you’d be releasing an immigration-fraud comedy in the middle of what we’re dealing with right now? (Laughs) In some ways, I wish this weren’t timely, you know. I wish we lived in better times. I could not have predicted the era in which this would get released.
My hope is that this film can offer a sense of humanity for these characters, so that people can’t deny that we have a right to exist, that we have a right to love who we want to love. And I get that this film might not change everybody’s minds, but hopefully it offers the opportunity to have a conversation and maybe move the needle just a little bit.
Your movies have mostly been about Asian and queer spaces. Why is it important still for you to continue to tell these stories about either the Asian experience through a queer lens or vice versa, the queer experience through an Asian lens? I’m not opposed to telling stories outside of this intersectional community, but I just find it so inspiring. And I also know that there are very few filmmakers who have the opportunity to tell these stories at a certain scale and to have a platform for them. So, I take that responsibility very seriously.
I’ll see where my interests take me, and that’s a gift to myself as an artist. But I think I’ll always want to make something queer and Asian, because I think that there are so many stories within this community that are worth telling.
The Wedding Banquet was written and directed by Andrew Ahn and stars Bowen Yang, Han Gi-chan, Joan Chen, Kelly Marie Chan and Lily Gladstone. It is currently in theaters.