Sometimes, good things come to those who don’t wait. Just two days after Nicole Kidman and “The Farewell” director Lulu Wang shared a maybe-tipsy photo teasing an upcoming collaboration, their studio has made it official: Kidman and Wang will be collaborating on a new Amazon television series, one that tries to capture the depict the American ex-pat experience on the streets of Hong Kong.
READ MORE: “The Farewell” Turned Down a Big Streaming Offer To Stay in Theaters
Based on Janice Y. K. Lee’s novel of the same name, “The Expatriates,” the story follows three American women who live in the same ex-pat community in Hong Kong. The book has been described by critics as “‘Sex in the City‘ meets ‘Lost in Translation,'” which should provide the show with the only logline it will ever need. Back in 2018, Variety announced that Kidman’s Blossom Films had signed a first-look deal with Amazon. “The Expatriates” would eventually become the first official project between the two companies, receiving the green light from Amazon executives in July of last year.
https://twitter.com/thumbelulu/status/1204999458540244993
Wang, of course, has received endless accolades for “The Farewell,” a biographical film about her return to China to visit her dying grandmother. Wang’s film did not shy away from dealing with complex issues of identity and nationality; the family in her film has scattered across the globe, creating complex tensions between those who remained in China and those who immigrated to America (and elsewhere). If Wang is indeed interested in revisiting some of these similar themes of culture and identity, she will understandably bring a lot to the project, especially given the ongoing political unrest in China (and the potential for that to add another layer of complexity to the story).
READ MORE: Nicole Kidman Says the Writers Will Dictate Whether There’s a ‘Big Little Lies’ Season 3
As noted in The Hollywood Reporter announcement, Wang is set to write and executive produce the series. She will also direct multiple episodes of the first season. Alice Bell, the writer and producer behind the 2015 award-winning Australian series “This Beautiful Life,” has also been named a writer on the show.
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