There’s a full trailer for Disney+’s adaptation of Gene Luen Yang’s award-winning American Born Chinese, and it is a delight. This is for many reasons, but one of them is admittedly the joy of seeing Everything Everywhere All at Once‘s Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan in the same series.
But neither of them is the main character here. That would be Jin Wang (Ben Wang), whose life changes dramatically when a new student arrives at his school—and Wei-Chen (Jim Liu) is not at all what he seems.
American Born Chinese comes from showrunner Kelvin Yu and Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Yu dug into the heart of the series:
The fact of the matter is, any kid who’s 15-16 years old, is in the process of identity formation. I don’t care what decade or century they’re living in, or culture, it sucks. That suckiness can be beautiful, it can be hilarious, it can be tragic, it can be delicious, it can be all of these things. This particular character, Jin, happens to have the added awkwardness of parents who don’t speak his language fluently, a mixing of cultures, and some not-so-politically-correct representations of himself that he also has to juggle. We just wanted to tell the story of what’s going on inside of a kid like that.
The depiction of what’s going on, in this case, involves magical powers and the appearance of figures from Chinese mythology, including Daniel Wu as the Monkey King and Yeoh as Guanyin, the goddess of mercy. And also as Jin’s auntie.
The series is certainly expanding on Yang’s graphic novel, presumably with his blessing; the author is an executive producer on the show. Lucy Liu and Peng Zhang are among the directors for the series, which also stars Yeo Yann Yann (Havoc), Chin Han (Mortal Kombat), and Sydney Taylor (Just Add Magic).
American Born Chinese premieres on Disney+ on May 24th.
