Andrew Ahn isn’t just remaking The Wedding Banquet — he’s reimagining it. In our interview, the director delves into how he transformed Ang Lee’s 1993 classic into a modern queer Asian American narrative by finding the delicate balance of humor and drama, the evolution of storytelling in 2025, and the cultural nuances that shape his characters.

Set in modern-day Seattle, The Wedding Banquet follows two queer couples: Angela Chen (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone), and Chris (Bowen Yang) and Min (Han Gi-chan). Angela and Lee are planning for a family in their future while Chris, Angela’s best friend since a one-time fling in college, lives in Lee’s garage with his longtime boyfriend Min, a Korean student artist are contemplating marriage. Angela and Lee’s plans are thrown into chaos when Lee’s second round of IVF is unsuccessful, and Chris’ commitment to Min gets complicated when Min’s visa is about to expire and his wealthy grandmother, Ja-Young, demands he come home to Korea.

In an effort to help each other out, Min proposes that he marries Angela so that he can appease his family and stay in the U.S., in exchange for the sham wedding, he will agree to pay for Lee’s fertility treatment. While the plan sounds good on paper, it is anything but perfect, and soon things start to spiral out of control.

We had a chance to speak to director Andrew Ahn about modernizing a groundbreaking classic, how languages help make for a more compelling story, paying homage vs putting your own signature on works, and music.

Which one of the scenes were kind of the toughest to get right, tonally, and did you have to reshuffle any jokes to make the film work?

Ahn: I think balancing drama and comedy is a very difficult task and it’s one that we were constantly shaping. We were shaping that in the writing, we were shaping that on set with my actors. We were shaping that in the edit. You’re getting options, you’re kind of taking some risks and you have to play around. I ultimately think you have to trust a certain instinct. Everybody has a different sense of humor and I ultimately had to find the spirit of the tone of the film by asking myself, ‘What do I like to watch and what makes me laugh?’ I think making a film is it’s a craft, and so just really put a lot of attention to detail. I’m excited for people to get to see the results.

What was the idea behind doing a reimagining as opposed to doing a remake?

I didn’t want to remake the story because it kind of doesn’t even make sense anymore. There’s a new context for these characters living in 2025 versus 1993. One of those things is that, at least here in the US, gay people can get married. So, of course, we would add a wrinkle to the plot of the original film. So from the get go, we knew that it wasn’t going to be a straight remake. I just thought about what are the conversations that I’m having as a queer person today. I was very inspired by my boyfriend and our conversations about getting married and about having kids, those really guided me through the development process And the co-writing process with James Schamus.

Since this is a reimaging based on an Ang Lee classic, how does one walk the line of paying homage to the original while staying true to their artistic style?

So I think it’s really important that every artist have a personal artistic point of view. I don’t think that imitating Ang Lee would have led to good results. I, at least, had to make it my own and that wasn’t difficult to do. I mean, I love the original film so much. It’s one of my favorite films, and, like any great piece of art, it inspires art. I took inspiration from the original film to create these characters and the story, and so the the roots of our movie are in the Ang Lee film and it just organically grew and blossomed from there.

Language also plays a huge role in the film as it allows us to see Angela and Min connect with their respective matriarchs. Does using Korean and Mandarin with English subtitles help make their stories more compelling?

I wanted to show a range of the Asian American experience. You have some characters who only speak English and you have some characters who speak English to their parent while their parent speaks Chinese to them. Then you have characters who are speaking a mix of Korean and English together. I think that that’s a fun way to show the diversity of our community. I wanted to create a cohesive family of very different individuals and language is definitely a part of what gives us our own identity.

Music also plays a huge role and I just wanted to know more about the songs you selected and making sure it fit into the right moments.

We worked with our music supervisor, Tiffany Sue and she’s Asian American, and knows cool Asian American artists. We really wanted to focus on Asian artists and queer artists and artists from the Pacific Northwest. The Linda Linda’s, I’ve been a fan of theirs for many years, and I loved this particular song – Oh! – and just felt that it had the right energy and panic what’s happening in the moment. I love that Tiffany introduced me to the band Chinese American bear, who made the song “Bear Day,” which is featured early in the film when everybody’s waking up. I just thought that their vibe was so dreamy and childlike and hopeful and wistful, and it just kind of struck the right tone. I really loved getting to, you know, put in some of my favorites, and then also get to know some new artists.

The Wedding Banquet is out in theaters now.

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