Palo Alto-raised director Jon M. Chu, whose film adaptation of “Wicked” might be one among the large box office hits of the 2024 Christmas season, has landed one other high-profile Hollywood contract: He is to develop and direct a feature film in regards to the lifetime of Britney Spears, based on her bestselling memoir “The Woman in Me.”
News of Chu's next big project got here Thursday via a report from industry newsletter The Ankler. Spears also shared news in regards to the “secret project.” on social media.
Universal Pictures acquired the rights to Spears' memoir after a hard-fought bidding war. Variety reported. Universal also produced “Wicked,” based on the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. “Wicked” is scheduled to hit theaters on Nov. 22, the weekend before Thanksgiving.
Spears' book has sold greater than 2.5 copies within the United States alone, Variety reported. The audiobook – read by Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Williams, with an introduction by Spears – was the fastest-selling in Simon & Schuster's history. The book traces her rise as a pop superstar and major cultural figure, from her days on the “Mickey Mouse Club” to her profession as a Grammy-winning solo artist. It also covers her highly publicized and scrutinized conservatorship case and delves into her difficult personal relationships together with her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake and together with her family, elements of which might be viewed as predatory, Variety also reported.
Chu is popping Spears' life story right into a film after recently releasing his own memoir, “Viewfinder.” In the book, he recounts his somewhat unconventional journey from Silicon Valley to Hollywood, where he became one among the industry's most sought-after directors following his hit 2018 romantic comedy “Crazy Rich Asians.”
Chu is the son of Lawrence and Ruth Chu, immigrants from China and Taiwan who own and operate the legendary Los Altos restaurant Chef Chu's. For a long time, Chef Chu's has been a hangout for Silicon Valley's elite, serving what critics call delicious yet progressive Chinese comfort food.
In a way, Chu followed his parents' tradition of serving up crowd favorites, as CBS noted in a recent interview with Chu. With Crazy Rich Asians, his eighth feature film, Chu also rewrote Hollywood's rules. Based on the best-selling novel by Kevin Kwan, his film was a critical and box office success. Unusually for Hollywood, the film also told a story that focused on Asians, and it was the primary mainstream American film in 25 years to feature a primarily Asian forged.
Chu, 44, grew up doing his homework or helping out at his family's restaurant, absorbing his parents' love of American popular culture in addition to the entrepreneurial spirit that was evident in a few of his parents' clients. He also got into producing home videos, starting with buying an audio/video mixer from a 1992 Sharper Image catalog, Chu said in an interview. this week with CBS.
In a 2018 interview with this news organization, Ruth Chu proudly showed off her son's student film awards from USC. She also laughed about being her own type of “tiger mom.” Instead of demanding that he and his 4 siblings develop into “lawyers, doctors, accountants,” she pushed them to pursue their passions. When teenage Jon tearfully told his parents he desired to make movies, Ruth Chu bought him a stack of books on film studies so he could learn how one can make it within the cutthroat world of Hollywood.
During his first decade within the industry, Chu was first discovered by Steven Spielberg after which built his repute by making concert movies for Justin Bieber and a number of other sequels, including “Step Up 2” and “GI Joe: Retaliation” with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. But Chu said his parents at all times encouraged him to make a movie about Chinese people, which led him to make “Crazy Rich Asians.”
Chu's follow-up to “Crazy Rich Asians” was the film adaptation of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical “In the Heights.” Now he's preparing to advertise “Wicked.” The film, which hits theaters on Nov. 22, is definitely the primary of two parts; “Wicked Part Two” is ready to hit theaters in November 2025.
The Broadway musical from which “Wicked” was adapted is itself based on the 1995 book “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” by writer Gregory Maguire. That's what the Hollywood Reporter said. That project, in turn, was based on characters from L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wizard of Oz, which were delivered to life within the Oscar-winning 1939 film musical The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland as Dorothy.
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