Color Force has landed feature film rights to first-time novelist Kevin Kwan's comedic best-seller CRAZY RICH ASIANS, it was announced today by Nina Jacobson, Color Force CEO. Jacobson and her partner Brad Simpson will produce the film. Bryan Unkeless, Color Force's senior vice president of production, will oversee development.
The rave-reviewed book, which became one of the industry's most hotly-pursued titles, is a hilarious look at three super-rich, pedigreed Chinese families whose predilection for gossip, backbiting and scheming reaches fever pitch when the heir to one of the most massive fortunes in Asia brings home his American-born Chinese girlfriend to the wedding of the season.
"Crazy Rich Asians is that immersive page turner I am constantly searching for but so rarely find," said Jacobson. "Kevin's writing took me into a world I'd never seen or imagined and got me so invested in the romance at the heart of it that I could not put the book down until I saw whether or not they made it. This novel represents an enormous opportunity for Color Force to tell a universal story to a global audience."
The book was represented by UTA, Alexandra Machinist at Janklow & Nesbit and
Peter Nichols of Lichter, Grossman, Nichols, Adler & Feldman on behalf of Kwan.
UTA and the author's reps are working with Color Force to structure financing from Asian and other international sources for the development and production of the film, which will be produced outside of the studio system.
Crazy Rich Asians is already an international bestseller and has garnered rave reviews. Entertainment Weekly called the novel "deliciously decadent," The New York Times said "[Kwan] keeps the repartee nicely outrageous, the excess wretched and the details wickedly delectable" and Glamour said "It's impossible not to get sucked into this satirical novel about the jet-setting lives of an enormous busybody family and its infinite Louboutin collection."
The book was published June 11, 2013 by Knopf Doubleday.
About Color Force
Since its inception, Nina Jacobson's Color Force has proven to be a hotbed for bringing beloved literary adaptations to the big screen. The company has placed a premium on the primacy of great storytelling. They have become known for working closely with authors and filmmakers throughout the adaptation process.
In just 5 years, Jacobson, along with her partner Brad Simpson, have been able to secure valuable partnerships with several favorite pop culture writers, including Suz
Anne Collins (The Hunger Games trilogy), David Nicholls (One Day) and Jeff Kinney (The Wimpy Kid series). The company is currently developing Maria Semple's best-selling novel "Where'd You Go, Bernadette?" with Annapurna Pictures. In 2012, Color Force signed a first-look cable television deal with FX Productions. The first production under this deal, The Run of His Life: The People V. O.J. Simpson, will premiere as a limited series on Fox in 2014.
Catching Fire, the follow up film to the record-breaking The Hunger Games, will be released by Lionsgate on November 22, 2013. Production on Mockingjay, the next installment in The Hunger Games films is set to begin this fall.
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