Filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton is following up his hit Marvel Studios film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings with another comics-inspired project.
However, the director is not staying within the pages of Marvel Comics for the new project, which is an animated Disney+ series featuring an adaptation of the graphic novel American Born Chinese.
The “genre-hopping action-comedy” comic from Gene Luen Yang centers on Jin Wang, “an average teenager juggling his high school social life with his immigrant home life” who, after meeting a new foreign student, “is unwittingly entangled in a battle of Chinese mythological gods.”
Like Shang-Chi before it, the upcoming series represents Asian culture both in front of and behind the scenes. Emmy-winning Bob’s Burgers veteran Kelvin Yu and his Westworld alum vet brother Charles are writing the American Born Chinese series, with Kelvin acting as showrunner. Melvin Mar and Jake Kasdan, two producers on the Asian-centric series Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. on Disney+ and ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, are executive producing with Gene Luen Yang.
In a statement, Cretton comments, “Reading Kelvin’s riveting adaptation of Gene’s incredible novel had me laughing and crying and jumping out of my chair on every page. I feel deeply connected to the characters in this story and the brilliant team bringing it to life.”
Cretton added, “This show is going to be unlike anything we’ve experienced on TV, and I can’t wait for the world to see what we’re cooking up.”
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