SNL star Bowen Yang’s latest extracurricular will find him working alongside an Oscar nominee and an Oscar winner.
Variety reports that Yang will star in a remake of The Wedding Banquet, the 1993 Ang Lee-directed romcom.
Yang will share the screen with Lily Gladstone, who is fresh off a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Youh-jung Youn — who won an Oscar for her supporting role in 2021’s Minari — will also star, as will Kelly Marie Tran and Joan Chen.
The film will be directed and co-written by Andrew Ahn. Focus Features founder James Schamus, who co-wrote the original film with Lee, will again serve as co-writer. Yang previously worked with Ahn on the 2022 film Fire Island.
The film is slated to begin shooting in Vancouver in late May, which aligns with the end of the season at SNL, where Yang is currently wrapping up his fifth year as a cast member.
He joined the show as a writer in 2018 before moving onscreen in 2019, and has been nominated for 3 Emmys over his run on the show — two as a supporting actor, and one as a writer.
Yang has a full plate of other upcoming films, including a supporting part opposite Ariana Grande in Wicked later this year, and voice roles in The Garfield Movie (due out next month) and The Cat in the Hat, alongside Bill Hader and Quinta Brunson.
